Sunglasses at night bust abductors of Manesar’s crorepati teaseller

THE KIDNAPPERS FORCED THE VICTIM, HARPAL SINGH, TO WEAR SUNGLASSES TO CONCEAL THE TAPE THEY HAD USED TO BLINDFOLD HIM

NEW DELHI: Harpal Singh is a lucky man.

Last month, the Haryana government acquired the 48-year old Manesar tea seller’s land for ₹3 crore.

On Monday night, he was abducted for ransom by two men who knew of the land deal, but was rescued barely hours later at the Delhi-gurgaon border after the sunglasses he was made to wear by his kidnappers aroused a policeman’s suspicion. It was, after all, the middle of the night.

The kidnappers forced Singh to wear sunglasses to conceal the tape they had used to blindfold him. The kidnappers had also tied his limbs and were holding him at gunpoint while driving him to their hideout in Delhi, said Anto Alphonse, deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka).

Singh escaped with swollen eyes and injuries to his head from a pistol-whipping at the time of his kidnapping. The two kidnappers, who have been arrested, have told the police they were aware that Singh had recently come into some money.

“Their immediate plan was to extract ₹3 lakh from him. They planned to demand much more ransom in the subsequent days,” said an investigator not authorised to speak to the media.

The kidnappers ran into their first problem when they realised that Singh wasn’t carrying his phone. That meant he couldn’t immediately arrange the money.

Singh runs a tea stall outside a Maruti Suzuki factory and also helped casual labourers find work. According to him, the fact that the government had bought his land was known to Janmahan Singh, one of the labourers.

A migrant from Uttar Pradesh, Janmahan Singh shared the information with a local resident, Vatan Ram, who owns two taxis. Until a month ago, Vatan’s taxis were plying for app-based cab platforms.

Vatan Ram offered one of his taxis, a Chevrolet Beat, for the kidnapping. The yellow registration number plate was replaced with a fake white one. The duo planned to keep Singh in a DDA flat in Outer Delhi’s Bakkarwala until his family paid the money, said Alphonse.

At around 9.30pm on Monday, Singh was at his tea shop when Vatan Ram lured him to the car parked some distance away. Janmahan Singh was waiting in the car. “They thrashed me badly, tied my hands and blindfolded me using a black tape and forced me to wear sunglasses. They began driving towards Delhi and said that I would be killed if the ransom was not paid,” said Singh.

The kidnappers were entering Delhi through Jhatikara village under the jurisdiction of Chhawla police station when they came to the attention of policemen manning a picket. That was around 11.40pm. “The car had a white number plate, but other signs on the vehicle suggested it was a taxi. When the car came close, the policemen spotted the victim wearing dark sunglasses which they thought odd at that time of the night,” said Alphonse.

Despite being flagged down, the car did not stop at the picket; the policemen alerted their colleagues down the road. The car was forcibly stopped at the next picket and the kidnappers, overpowered.

Moments later, the police realised that it was a kidnapping. “Since the kidnapping had happened just two hours earlier, the police in Manesar were not aware of the crime,” said Alphonse.