Sunil Pal

Sunil Pal was born in 1975 into a middle class Marathi speaking family in Maharashtra. His father was an employee for the Indian Railways. He studied in Janata Vidyalaya city branch school, Balharshah. He came to Mumbai in 1995 when his father got transferred. He joined the Junior College. There he used to mimic his professors and famous actors. After college, he struggled for three years.^[3]

Pal was kidnapped and held hostage on 2 December 2024. He was abducted, when he was on the way to an event in Haridwar, where he was invited by the kidnappers in the pretext of live performance. The kidnappers reportedly asked for a ransom of ₹20 lakh and released him after twenty four hours on the Delhi-Meerut road with ₹20,000 to return home.^[6]

The case took a new turn when two audio recordings surfaced, suggesting the incident may have been a publicity stunt.

In the first audio, an unidentified person tells Pal that they have acted on his instructions, while Pal insists he did not file a complaint and claims media pressure forced him to respond. In the second audio, Pal states that he was threatened by his alleged kidnappers, who possess personal details about him and his family.

Pal's wife reported to the police, asserting that the audio were edited.^[7]

Police identified two main accused nams named Lavi Pal and Arjun Karnwal for kidnapping Sunil Pal and a similar kidnapping case of comedian Mushtaq Khan.^[8][9]

On 14 December 2024, Uttar Pradesh Police arrested Arjun, he was shot and injured the next day during an encounter with police in Meerut. Police recovered an SUV along with ₹2.25 lakh cash and a mobile phone used in the crime from the accused.^[10]

On the night of 22-23 December, Police arrested the main accused Lavi Pal, for the kidnapping of Mushtaq Khan and Sunil Pal after an encounter in Bijnor. A total of seven arrests were made in the case.^[11]