Mumbai: In a 10-day discreet operation, the Sion police have rescued a 47-year-old man from Telangana who had allegedly been kidnapped for ransom from Mumbai after returning from Dubai. The police said he was being held hostage in Puducherry, and are looking for two men who allegedly abducted him as he owed them money.
The police said Shankar Mathmalla, who was working in Dubai, landed in Mumbai on June 22. He was to take a bus from Sion to Telangana but never got there. His son Harish reached Mumbai and questioned the bus operator, who told him that Shankar had booked a ticket but cancelled it.
Even as Harish was trying to obtain clues about his missing father’s whereabouts, Shankar called him on June 24 and said that he was in a hospital in Chennai. He hung up before Harish could ask any more questions, following which he rushed to Sion police station and registered a missing person’s report.
A police officer said Harish received several calls from an unknown number on June 28. The caller said he had Shankar in his custody and demanded Rs 15 lakh in exchange for his release. Harish’s complaint was immediately turned into one for kidnapping. “We then started tracking the cellular location and also obtained other details about the number,” the officer said.
He added that while analysing the call detail records of the number from which the ransom call had come, the investigating team realised that the abductor had exchanged calls with Shankar several times in the past. This led the police to believe that the kidnappers knew him. Meanwhile, using the registration details of the number, the police identified the accused and sent a team to Puducherry, where the number’s last location had been recorded in cellular location mapping.
Over a week-long investigation in collaboration with the local police, the Sion police were able to identify some family members of the accused, and started calling them up. Simultaneously, they were also continuously tracking Shankar’s cell phone. On Saturday, they suddenly got a hit on his location, which was near the Puducherry railway station.
“We rushed to the station and scoured the entire area till we found him. He was severely injured and we took him to a local hospital, after which we brought him back to Mumbai on Sunday,” an officer said. Prima facie, he said, it seems that the accused panicked when we started contacting their family members and abandoned him at the railway station. “Shankar has also mentioned that he owed money to the accused and we are working further on this angle,” the officer said.
Senior police inspector Manoj Hirlekar confirmed that Shankar has been brought back safely to Mumbai. “He is in hospital receiving treatment for his injuries. We are yet to record a formal statement from him. A probe is underway to trace and apprehend the accused,” Hirlekar said.
