Businessman abducted, wife gets clips seeking Rs 82 lakh ransom

MUMBAI: For three days, Andheri resident Hetal Shah tried to maintain a straight face as her husband’s kidnappers kept sending her WhatsApp videos of him pleading for help. The kidnappers demanded Rs 82 lakh for his release. After desperately bargaining with the gang to bring down the ransom amount to Rs 10 lakh and a nine-hour journey on different trains, Hetal finally met the men on Friday at Vasai station, where a police team lay in wait for them. Six men were arrested and Hetal’s husband Bhavin (39) rescued. Amboli police said the family of Bhavin, who runs a chemicals business, had lent the kidnap mastermind, Mohd Shanu Shaikh, Rs 2.5 lakh. The abduction took place on October 31, after Bhavin left home for Andheri RTO to get a tanker registered.Around 2pm, he called up home and informed that he would be return in an hour. When Bhavin did not return till late in the night, his worried family lodged a missing person’s complaint. Bhavin told TOI, “When I was at the RTO, the accused called me up pretending to be clients and wanting to place an order for chemicals. They called me to the level-crossing gate at Ram Mandir, but when I reached there, I was bundled into a car. I saw Shaikh and some other people in the vehicle and then someone held a gun against my back and threatened me to stay mum. The accused took me to Nalasopara.”On November 1, Hetal received a call from her husband’s phone and an unknown person reportedly asked her to check her WhatsApp. A video clip had been sent to her from her husband’s number, showing a visibly assaulted Bhavin telling her in Gujarati that he had been kidnapped and she should pay Rs 82 lakh to the kidnappers. Hetal then went back to police station and lodged a kidnapping case.Over the next two days, the kidnappers called Hetal repeatedly from Bhavin’s number and sent four more videos. When she told them it wasn’t possible for her to raise such a big sum without her husband’s signatures, they threatened to behead Bhavin, sever his fingers or kidnap their eight-year-old son. After much bargaining, the ransom was brought down to Rs 50 lakh and finally Rs 10 lakh. On Friday, the gang asked Hetal to take a train with the money and wait for instructions. “From 2.30pm to 11pm, they made Hetal hop on and off trains at Goregaon, Kandivli, Naigaon and Virar while a team of cops kept a watch on her movement. She was even fined at Andheri as she had forgotten to purchase a ticket in haste,” said senior inspector Bharat Gaikwad.Though the kidnappers instructed her to keep her phone busy and asked her to travel alone, three female cops in mufti were around her all the time. At Vasai station, she finally met two of the kidnappers and the police immediately swooped down on them. Two others were arrested later from the Vasai-Virar belt. Bhavin was rescued from a rented apartment in Nalasopara where Shaikh used to stay. What made the task of locating Bhavin difficult for police was the kidnappers used to travel to the Mumbai-Gujarat border to make the ransom calls to Hetal. As a result, though the police combed the stretch for three days looking for Bhavin, they could not find him. The police said the accused told that they had learnt tricks to throw cops off the track from crime TV shows.“Shaikh used to run a mobile covers business and had some business dealings with Bhavin’s brother, who is no more. After his business shut down, Shaikh moved to a rented apartment in Nalasopara and started planning the crime,” investigating officer Daya Nayak said. Shaikh’s wife and kids are in Allahabad.The car in which Bhavin was kidnapped belongs to an Ola driver who too was part of the conspiracy. The accused also used Bhavin’s debit cards to withdraw Rs 80,000. The police have seized six cellphones, the car, Bhavin’s debit cards, a pistol and three cartridges. Shaikh and his associates—Sandeep Sharma, Chitrabhan Singh, Anil Pandey, Dheeraj Singh and Mohammad Kabaadi—have been remanded in police custody for 10 days.