Mumbai: In a case straight out of a Bollywood potboiler, Mumbai police has arrested three city-based businessmen for allegedly kidnapping a middleman and attempting to extort Rs 10lakh from his father as ransom to free him.
L.T. Marg police arrested the three accused - Habib Ahmed Kadar Shaikh (44), Maqbool Bashir Khan (40), and Maqbool Hussain Khalil Sayyed (30) for kidnapping and extortion of Suresh Sagawikar (39), the middleman for exchanging the scrapped notes. The three accused kidnapped Sagawikar from south Mumbai on January 18 and took him to a place in Andheri.
Police sources said that the main accused, Habib Shaikh, a businessman, had approached Sagawikar to exchange his scrapped notes worth Rs 10lakh. Sagawikar then made calls and contacted a second middleman and reached out to Shaikh, confirming the exchange. Shaikh gave his scrapped notes to Sagawikar on January 10 who gave it to the second middleman for exchange.
Much to the surprise of Sagawikar, his aide fled with the money, leaving him in the lurch. Police sources said that when Sagawikar informed Shaikh about the development, the latter started demanding his money back to which Sagawikar refused, further infuriating Shaikh. The trio is now in judicial custody.
