"The last picture that Yash Lakhotia's family have of him was taken at the shopping mall, the most middle-class of Indian destinations. It shows him smiling, with his arm around his big sister, Neha. Both are wearing smart western clothes, looking the epitome of the country's new, upwardly mobile generation.
But it was a look that cost Yash his life. Two days after the photograph was taken, a car drew up outside the seven-year-old's school as he was leaving. Yash must have assumed that the man inside had been sent by his father to collect him. He got in, the door closed, and he was gone.
Neighbours found his body three days later, dumped among bushes near the waterfront in Howrah, Kolkata's twin city. He was just one more victim of India's burgeoning kidnap industry.
As the country's economy booms and millions make the leap from poverty to the ranks of the new middle class, there has been a corresponding surge in kidnapping for ransom as those who feel left behind seek a share of the spoils.
Insurers rank India as the fifth most dangerous country in the world for kidnapping, with one US firm warning last month that westerners should now also consider themselves targets"...................READ MORE
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