The Hindu : New Delhi News : Gujarati businessman rescued; 3 held

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Wednesday, Jul 04, 2007
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Gujarati businessman rescued; 3 held

Staff Reporter

Ahmedabad-based victim had been kidnapped from outside Delhi airport

- Photo: S. Subramanium

In police net: Members of the gang involved in the kidnapping of the businessman from Ahmedabad Raju Bhai Himmat Ram Malvi (right), at the Delhi Police Crime Branch office at Chanakyapuri on Tuesday.

NEW DELHI: Three young men, who allegedly kidnapped an Ahmedabad-based businessman from outside Delhi airport here on June 25 for a ransom of Rs.1l.5 crore, were arrested after the victim was rescued from a Gurgaon flat on Tuesday. One of the accused is the victim’s cousin. The Inter-State Cell of the Crime Branch received information recently that 32-year-old Raju Bhai Himmat Ram Malvi, engaged in manufacture of instruments for carving jewellery, had been kidnapped from outside Delhi airport.

The kidnappers -- posing as Dubai-based businessmen -- contacted Mr. Malvi through e-mail offering to buy his products in bulk. They also sent him an air ticket to Delhi through e-mail for a “business meeting”. As he arrived here, they took him to their hideout on the pretext of going to a hotel and then rang up his relatives demanding Rs. 1.5 crore for his release. The callers identified themselves as members of a Dubai-based Pathan gang.

The ransom calls, all of which were made early in the morning, were traced to places like Noida, Baghpat, Meerut and Gajraula in Uttar Pradesh. Even as the police launched a hunt for the culprits, the kidnappers got a video compact disc delivered to Mr. Malvi’s family, showing him blindfolded to terrorise them and force them to pay up the ransom amount.

Investigations into the sequence of events leading to Mr. Malvi’s kidnapping indicated the involvement of his cousin Sandeep Parmar (23), who worked in a Gurgaon call centre.

During interrogation, Sandeep broke down and purportedly confessed to having masterminded the kidnapping. A team led by Inspector K.G. Tyagi under the supervision of Assistant Commissioner of Police Joy Tirkey arrested two of his alleged accomplices, Mukul Yadav (22) and Sandeep Singh (23), and rescued Mr. Malvi’s from a Gurgaon flat where he had been kept.

Sandeep, whose father is a cloth merchant in Surat, allegedly disclosed that he was Mr. Malvi’s first cousin and that he had passed on information about him to his friends who hatched a conspiracy to kidnap him for a hefty ransom.

Engineer

Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Multesh Chander said Mukul, whose father is an engineer at Ahmedabad airport, also worked in a Gurgaon call centre. Sandeep Singh is a Lucknow University graduate and had recently come to Gurgaon in search of a job. His father is a retired Army officer. The police have launched a hunt for two more suspects in the case.

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