Mumbai: Kidnapping ends in a ‘gut-wrenching’ tale

The man was made to swallow two gold biscuits each weighing 160 grams. Representation pic

A man 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.

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.

The kidnappers released Shankar Mathamalla in Puducherry when they realised the cops were closing in on them

A police officer said, "A person named Abu met Mathamalla in Mumbai and took him to a toilet where one tablet came out with his excreta. But there was no sign of the other. He was then taken to a hotel at Sion where the smugglers waited for a day for the other gold tablet to come out."

Suspecting that Mathamalla had double-crossed it, the gang took him to Chennai by flight, then to Trichy and Puducherry. Mathamalla was severely beaten and R15 lakh ransom was demanded from his family on June 27. His captive photographs were shared with his family to pressure them to pay up. They alerted the Sion police about the ransom demand.

A team from Sion police rescued Mathamalla from Puducherry. Tracking the numbers for ransom calls, they detained a few family members of the kidnappers. Realising that the police were behind them, the kidnappers released Mathamalla near a railway station at Karikali in Puducherry.

The cops then arrested Abu, alias Aurangjeeb Akbar, 38, from Tamil Nadu who apparently had received Mathamalla in Mumbai on his arrival. Abu's accomplice Vijay, alias Pura Vijay Vasudevan, 25, was also arrested. The police said the mastermind, Raja, alias Haja Kamluddin Majid, is still at large.

Senior inspector of Sion police station Manoj Hirlekar said the two have been remanded in police custody for 7 days and the hunt for the mastermind is on. On being asked about the second tablet, Mathamalla told the cops that he might have unknowingly purged it out before landing in Mumbai.