Gupta personally escorted Sanghai to captivity on the day of the kidnapping, visited Sanghai twice while he was held captive, and posed before Sanghai´s family members as a well-meaning mediator assisting his release from his captors, said Senior Superintendent of Police Devendra Subedi, chief of Metropolitan Police Crime Division (MPCD) that arrested Gupta from his residence in Bhairahawa on Monday. [break]
“To persuade his accomplices to assist him in the crime, Gupta appears to have cooked up a story that he had built a petrol pump for Sanghai. In the eyes of his accomplices, the abduction was merely meant to get back money that was rightfully Gupta´s,” Subedi said.
Four of his partners-in-crime arrested so far have in unison pointed their fingers at Gupta as the mastermind and the main recipient of the ransom amount. Among those arrested are Gupta´s personal driver Amir Acharya, 22, apart from Akash Lama, 31, of Kavre, Jit Bahadur Gole, 38, of Makawanpur, and Kishor Pandey, 28, of Kavresthali-6, Kathmandu. Gole has served a 10-year jail term for human trafficking.
Kathmandu District Court on Tuesday gave police permission to remand Gupta and the other four for four days for further investigation.
How the kidnapping was executed
For a week before Sanghai´s abduction from Kamaladi Ganesthan temple, Gupta prepared Pandey, who works at Garud Security Service Recovery Unit, to identify Sanghai, police said.
Pandey was tasked with identifying Sanghai for four individuals who arrived at the temple in a microbus in the morning of December 22 to pick up Sanghai, who was a daily visitor of the temple.
After forcing him into the microbus, the four men took Sanghai to Kupondol where he was blindfolded and moved to a red Tata Sumo in which Lama and Gole were waiting.
Thereafter, Gupta himself escorted the vehicle to Dhulikhel, personally traveling in another vehicle that led the way, the arrested four told police.
From Dhulikhel, Sanghai was taken to the house of Maya Tamang at Sarsyunkhola, Lamagaun-3, Kavre.
Just hours after the abduction, an individual identifying himself as Bikrant Singh of Red Madhesi Army (RMA) made a phone call to Sanghai´s family members claiming that his outfit had abducted Sanghai to get money to purchase weapons.
On December 23, abductors made another phone call and let the family members hear a recorded message of Sanghai.
And on December 24, abductors demanded Rs 250 million from the family, threatening to kill Sanghai and make his body disappear if the ransom was not paid.
On December 27, another phone call was made claiming Sanghai was jointly abducted by RMA and Defense Army. Two callers, one speaking in Nepali and the other in Hindi, threatened the family again and demanded the ransom.
Investigations have revealed that the phone calls were made by Shyam Giri and Amar Thapa, who were hired by Gupta for the purpose. They made phone calls from Indian and Nepali numbers. Police are yet to nab the two.
On December 30, the duo made a phone call for the last time and lowered the ransom amount to Rs 200 million.
Details after this are sketchy. What is clear is that by then Gupta, who appears to be an old acquaintance of Sanghai, had won the confidence of the Sanghai family as a mediator. In the dual role of the kidnapping´s mastermind and Sanghai family´s mediator, he was making sure that everyone would dance to his tune.
“The final ransom settlement seems to have been for Rs 10 million,” SSP Subedi said. “Of that, it seems only Rs 8.5 million was paid,” he added.
On January 11, Sanghai´s family members reached Amrit Bhog in Dillibazaar with two bags containing the ransom amount.
“I picked up the bags and delivered them to sir´s (Gupta´s) residence,” said Gupta´s driver Acharya in a video-recorded statement to police.
Sanghai was freed the same day.
After receiving the ransom amount, Gupta invited five of his accomplices individually to his Kusunti residence and gave away each of them Rs 400,000.
Police investigation has also revealed that Gupta had kept accomplices Lama and Gole in a rented flat on the outskirts of Kathmandu for six months before the abduction.
Apart from Giri and Thapa, Milan Lama of Sarlahi, Prem Lama of Kavre, Hari KC of Sindhuli, one Indra Gurung, and two unidentified individuals involved in the kidnapping are absconding.
Sanghai´s family members, who had been lukewarm in cooperating with police investigation, are still very hesitant to open up with police.
“They probably still feel very insecure,” a police officer involved in the investigation said.
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