Police shot dead in a gun battle two ransom-seekers who kidnapped an eleven-year-old boy from Kandaghari in Kathmandu Metropolitan City-32 on Sunday.

The abductors, who demanded a ransom of Rs4 million, murdered the boy.

Senior Superintendent of Police at the Metropolitan Crime Division, Dhiraj Pratap Singh said police shot dead the two kidnappers, who abducted and murdered the boy, in Doleshwor Jungle in Suryabinayak, Bhaktapur.

Police found Nishan Khadka’s body on Monday afternoon from an under construction house that belongs to Shyam Raut, in Bhaktapur.

Police identified the kidnappers as Ajay Tamang, 23, resident of Nuwakot, and Gopal Tamang, 22, from Sindhupalchok.

A Metropolitan Police Crime Division deployed a team led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Rugam Kunwar to search the kidnapped boy in Doleshwor Jungle.

The duo abducted Nishan Khadka at 6pm on Sunday from an eatery run by his mother Chameli Khadka, a resident of Melamchi, Sindhupalchok. Police found the murdered boy at Madhyapur Thimi Municipality-7 on Sunday afternoon.

The abductors had tied the boy’s neck and stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth, police said.

The gun battle between the kidnappers and police took place in the forest near the Suryabinayak temple in Suryabinayak Municipality-8 leading to Pilot Baba Ashram.

“The encounter between the abductors and the police took place in the forest. The kidnappers fired at us first. Both were killed in gunfight,” said SSP Singh.

Police recovered a pistol, two rounds of bullets and a mobile from the site. Preparations were on to collect circumstantial evidence of the incident, and take the bodies of the deceased abductors to Kathmandu, said Singh.

Prior to the abduction, deceased Gopal as usual visited the restaurant run by the murdered child’s mother on that fateful day, according to the police preliminary investigations.

Khadka’s maternal grandfather Min Prasad Sapkota  said, “They abducted the child under the pretext of taking him for an evening walk.”

The family reported the incident to police two hours later after the child failed to return home.

Although police launched a search for the boy at 8pm, his kidnapping was known after the criminals called the boy’s mother on phone two times at around 9pm, demanding a ransom of Rs4 million.

A team comprising 150 police personnel from the Kandaghari Police Sector, the Metropolitan Police Range, Bhaktapur, Metropolitan Police Circle, Thimi and Crime Division launched a manhunt at night.

The police team was deployed in the Thimi Dhunchepakha and Nagadesh area this morning after receiving information that the abductors were hiding there. Five police teams surrounded the Suryabinayak jungle area.

The boy’s father, Ganesh, is a migrant worker in Malaysia. The boy was a sixth grade student at the Highland Secondary School in local Town Planning.

“The abductors’ motive was to extort money since the boy’s father works in Malaysia,” said SSP Bishwo Raj Pokhrel at the Metropolitan Police Range, Kathmandu.