Late on Tuesday night, a man was held hostage and looted at gun point near Rajpath Club. According to Shailendra Mishra, a resident of Shrinandnagar-II in Vejalpur area, three men forced him into their car and robbed him of his valuables at 11:30pm.
The men even threatened to kill him if his wife failed to pay a ransom of Rs5 lakh, but timely action by the cops retrieved the situation.
Shailendra also claimed that a girl, who used to work with him at his previous job, had masterminded the crime.
In his complaint to the Vastrapur police, Mishra, a marketing manger for a Mumbai-based company, was looted by three men -- Rahul, Mahesh and Tino -- and a fourth, unidentified man, at the behest of Swati Songhi, a receptionist at Nisha Infrastructure Ltd, his previous employer. However, Vastrapur police’s quick response foiled their machinations and the culprits fled the spot when the cops arrived.
Shailendra, 38, told the police that he used to work at Nisha Infrastructure till May 2011, when he joined Mumbai-based VV Valves. On November 6, he received a call from Swati, who asked him to meet her to discuss a personal matter. Since Shailendra was boarding a flight to Hyderabad at the time, he told Swati to contact him after two days.
When he returned on November 8 at 9pm, he called Swati and asked her the reason for her earlier call. Swati told Shailendra to meet her at her residence to discuss the matter. Shailendra who didn’t know the address, was asked by Swati to come to Rajpath Club on SG Highway. She told him that Rahul would pick him up from there. When Shailendra reached the club from the airport in a rickshaw, he found that three men were standing besides Rahul outside a Maruti van. He quickly gathered from their conversation that something was amiss, and tried to flee from the place on foot.
But he was held back by the four men, who took Shailendra hostage inside the car and looted him of valuables worth Rs64,000. The four then forced Shailendra to call up his wife and tell her to bring Rs5 lakh as the price for his freedom.
A frightened Shailendra asked his wife Vaishali to bring the money as soon as possible. His wife in turn contacted the police. When a team reached the spot, the culprits panicked. They flung Shailendra out of the van and fled the scene.
