A 21-year-old medical student who was kidnapped from Uttar Pradesh's Gonda district on January 18 for Rs 70 lakh ransom has been rescued and five people, including a doctor who works in Delhi and allegedly plotted the conspiracy, have been arrested, police said on 22 January.

Three of the accused, including the mastermind, were held following an exchange of gunfire at the Zero Point in Greater Noida late on 21 January night while they were on an expressway in a car with the hostage, the police said. Their two other associates, who had made the ransom call to the student's father, who also is a doctor and lives in Bahraich, were arrested from Sant Kabir Nagar later on 22 January, the police said. "The abducted student, was rescued safely from the car in the joint operation by the Noida unit of the Special Task Force (STF) and the Gonda Police, according to an official statement.

The abducted student, a resident of Kashipur in the Payagpur area of Bahraich district, is pursuing Bachelor of Ayurveda, Medicine, and Surgery (BAMS) from the SCPM College of Nursing and Medical Sciences, Haripur in Gonda and was residing in the hostel. The trio arrested in Greater Noida have been identified as mastermind doctor, who has a BAMS degree from an institute in Bengaluru, other two doctors, the STF said.

The accused had demanded a ransom of Rs 70 lakh from the abducted student's father over a phone call, a day after the student's kidnapping, prompting his family to approach the police. The abducted student was honey-trapped by a woman known to the conspiracy's mastermind and she had called him for a meeting in Gonda on January 18 but instead he was kidnapped and brought to Delhi by the accused, Additional Superintendent of Police, STF said.

"During investigation, it came to light that the kidnappers had again called the student's family on 21 January for ransom and were leaving for Lucknow from Delhi in a car along with the hostage but were tracked down, the Additional Superintendent of Police the mastermind doctor told police that he works at a hospital in Delhi's Najafgarh and the woman who honey-trapped the abducted student works in the same hospital. The abducted student was kept at the doctor's flat in Delhi after kidnapping and was injected with sedatives in captivity since January 18, the SP said.