Police in Uttar Pradesh's Etah district has arrested a 19-year-old girl on Saturday for staging her own kidnapping with the help of her boyfriend to seek Rs 1 crore from her parents. The incident took place in Nagla Bhajna village. According to the police, the girl, who went missing on Thursday night, made several calls from her phone to her parents and demanded money.

However, she was arrested from a nearby farm on Saturday but her boyfriend managed to escape. Rahul Kumar, Superintendent of Police (SP)- Crime, Etah, said: "The couple, who are neighbours, were in a relationship for nearly two years. However, the girl's parents were against the relationship."

Recently, the girl learnt that her family was preparing to open a school and was investing Rs 1 crore in the project.

"She, along with her boyfriend, then hatched a plan to extort the money and elope. After leaving her house on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday, the girl, pretending to be a kidnapper, made a ransom call to her parents," he said. The parents then decided to approach the police.

"Initially, we thought that it was the work of a professional kidnapper gang and deployed the entire police machinery to locate the girl. But after continuous negotiations and hour-long calls, we understood that something was fishy about the case. Our surveillance team tracked the girl's phone number, which she carried along with herself.

"It was later found out that she was using her phone for the ransom call. On Saturday, she was found just a couple of hundred metres from her home. We have detained her for questioning," the SP added.

The officer said a police team has been deployed to trace her boyfriend.

"We will lodge an FIR against the duo once we ascertain the sequence of event," he added

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