Kathmandu, February 11:

A group of unidentified persons have kidnapped 15-year-old Chhiring Sonam Sherpa from Bouddha yesterday and asked for a ransom from his parents for the safe return of the boy.

Sherpa, a class eight student of Rosy Garden School, Bouddha, was kidnapped by a group of four when he was on his way to school, the police said. The abductors had come in a cab, police said, adding, the boy was spirited away in the same vehicle.

“We are trying to locate the cab,” a police official at the Bouddha Ward Police Office, said.

Sherpa’s father resides in the United States and the boy stays with his mother in Kathmandu.

According to the police official, the kidnappers telephoned Lhamu Sherpa, the boy’s mother, at 3 pm yesterday evening. “They said they were the friends of my son and would leave him at school by 5 pm on Friday,” Lhamu said.

But, the kidnappers phoned her again later on yesterday to inform her that Sonam would return to his house by Saturday morning. “I hadn’t suspected a kidnapping till then, though I had called up the police,” she added.

She said the kidnappers telephoned her again this afternoon asking for money. “Sonam will be released after we get the money,” Lhamu quoted the Kidnapper as saying.

Lhamu said she didn’t clearly get the message of the kidnappers but police now have little doubt that Sonam was kidnapped for money.

“The kidnappers might have lied to the family yesterday so that the police was not informed on time and they had the time to take the boy away to a safe location,” the police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said.

“As the boy’s father lives in the United States, they might have assumed the family is rich and would be able to pay a heavy ransom to secure the boy’s release,” the official said.

According to the police, the kidnappers had telephoned the boy’s house from Kapan yesterday while they called from Kalanki today.