Kidnapping ends in a ‘gut-wrenching’ tale

Aman from Telangana swallowed two gold biscuits before flying from Dubai to Mumbai for a commission. He was to pass on the yellow metal to members of a smuggling syndicate. He walked out of the airport but didn’t realise he had already purged one biscuit before landing. When his body dispensed just one, the syndicate kidnapped him and demanded Rs 15 lakh ransom from his family. The police have arrested two men for his abduction.

Mumbai: Kidnapping ends in a ‘gut-wrenching’ tale
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Mumbai: Kidnapping ends in a ‘gut-wrenching’ tale
Shankar Mathamalla, 45, was kidnapped barely a day after he landed in Mumbai on June 22. The kidnappers left him near a railway station in Puducherry after they realised the police were tracking them. As they continued their probe after Mathamalla was rescued, the Sion police arrested two men with links to an international gold smuggling syndicate. What seemed to be a straight kidnapping story turned out to be much more convoluted.

Sources said the man was made to swallow two gold biscuits each weighing 160 grams. He was to give the precious metal worth Rs 16 lakh to the smugglers and was promised a commission of Rs 10,000 for the job. Mathamalla was also carrying 11,000 Dirhams—about Rs 2.4 lakh—that he had earned in the past two years.

A resident of Nandagiri town of Telangana’s Jagtial district, Mathamalla had told his family he was accompanying a person from Tamil Nadu. When they couldn’t reach him, they called the person who said he had left Mathamalla at Sion. His son Harish then rushed to Mumbai and filed a missing complaint. But that was not the case.