The Crime Branch of Delhi Police has arrested two brothers after 24 years, who were wanted in a case of kidnapping a worker at a shop in Chandni Chowk area and demanding ransom from the owner, an official said on Saturday.

The fugitives identified as Puneet and Vinit Agrawal were presently residing at Gurugram, Haryana, and Delhi’s Pitampura respectively, in a bid to evade arrest.

The police further added that the two brothers on a regular basis kept changing their hideouts.

Way back in the year 2000, on January 29, an information was received at Kotwali police station, Delhi that a person namely Shrinath had been kidnapped from Kinari Bazar, Chandni Chowk.

On the very next day Shrinath arrived at the police station with the shop owner where he worked and filed a complaint with the police alleging that Suneet Aggarwal, Puneet, and Vinit had kidnapped him from the shop where he worked and asked for a ransom to release him.

The accused had demanded a ransom amount of Rs 50000 from the shop owner, the police said.

It was later that the accused persons left him near Tughlak Road, Delhi and fled away, the police added.

According to police, in the ongoing probe back then, one of the accused persons, namely, Suneet was arrested in the case.

However, Puneet did not join the probe, and was declared as a proclaimed offender by a Delhi court on May 22, 2000.

In the ongoing trial of the case, the accused persons did not appear before the court and were declared proclaimed offender on October 15, 2004.

During their questioning, they also revealed about staying out of station, escaping to Mumbai in a bid to evade arrest for about ten years, before they returned to Delhi NCR assuming that they were away from the law, however they still kept changing their locations.

However, police got some inputs about the two and further traced their locations, apprehending the both from Gurugram and Pitampura respectively.

They have disclosed that the quest for making easy money during that point of time led them to hatch a plan to rob the shop owner in Chandni Chowk area, and in a bid to execute their plan they kidnapped a person who was working at that shop, and later demanded Rs 50,000 from the owner of the shop, the police said.

After committing the crime, they escaped to Mumbai for ten years, and did not contact anyone during the period in order to evade the arrest.