Ludhiana hosiery factory owner kidnapped, shot at

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Ludhiana, November 18

An industrialist, Sambhav Jain, was kidnapped by five kidnappers from Laddu colony, an industrial area at Noorwala village, last night. The kidnappers demanded Rs 5 crore ransom.

As the victim tried to escape from the clutches of the kidnappers, they inflicted a bullet injury on his thigh in the moving car and also thrashed him. Later, they threw him out of the car and fled away without the ransom.

The injured businessman, who is a resident of Civil Lines, is undergoing treatment at DMC hospital.

As per complainant Sambhav, the incident occurred at around 8.15 pm on Friday when he left from his hosiery unit in his car. About 500m away from the factory, a motorcycle coming from the opposite direction rammed into the car. He immediately came out of his car and started calming down the motorcyclist who was crying.

Suddenly, four more persons arrived and started beating him up. They bundled him in his car and took him along. “When I protested, they shot me in the left thigh inside the car. The kidnappers also blindfolded me. They asked me to arrange Rs 5 crore or they would kill me. When I expressed my inability to arrange such a big amount, they continued to torture me in the moving car,” alleged the victim.

After roaming around the city for about two hours in the car, they pointed a pistol at him and, on their direction, he told his wife Saumya that Income Tax sleuths had raided their hosiery. He told her to bring cash and ornaments from the house and reach near the Pavilion Mall immediately.

Complainant Sambhav said his wife reached outside Pavilion Mall with the available cash and valuables, but the accused got suspicious that the police were chasing them. They kept changing the location to collect ransom. His wife had to go to Fountain chowk, then College road carrying the ransom amount.

But to “save themselves” from the police, the kidnappers threw Sambhav out of the car near Jagraon bridge and sped away in his car. He immediately called up his family members who reached there and shifted him to the hospital. The complainant alleged that kidnappers were interacting in Punjabi language and two of them were being called Ravi and Mohit.

ACP Sumit Sood said that the police were working on various theories and all angles were being probed to identify the kidnappers. A case of kidnapping and under other charges was filed against Mohit, Ravi and unidentified persons.