Why a phone call from Bihar should ring alarm bells for you
“Come to the land of enlightenment,” boasts a banner on the Bihar tourism website. Somewhat smug, it also slips in a tagline: “You will keep coming back for more.” Are you kidding?
Will they ever come back to Bihar? It was a cruel question; but a few media persons still threw it at the two businessman brothers from Delhi, Suresh Sharma (40) and Kapil Sharma (27), only hours after Bihar police rescued them from the clutches of abductors on Tuesday night. Having spent five painful days in captivity, the two hapless brothers only responded with a wistful, blank stare.
The two sons of Delhi businessman Babulal Sharma may stay away from the land of Buddha forever. But their Bihar experience has surely been "enlightening," leaving them bitter and wiser in equal ounces.
Grown up individuals and established businessmen; they still fell for such a pedestrian trick. Someone unknown called them on October 10, offered them a lucrative contract in Bihar, and, when they evinced interest, even sent them air-tickets to Patna.
It took the conspirator only 10 days to win Sharma’s trust; and the two Delhi-based marble traders willingly boarded the Go-Air flight to Patna. When they reached Patna on October 21 in pursuance of a non-existent contract and some Bihari hospitality, they were abducted from the airport.
In his first conversation, the caller had introduced himself as one Gopal Goel. He gave reference of an engineer known to the Sharma family earlier and glibly spoke about how he could swing government contracts worth Rs 200 crores.
Though the Sharmas did not check with the said engineer, they were skeptical in the beginning. Besides their engagement in the marble industry in three states – Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh – the Delhi-based Sharmas also provide qualified manpower to different construction companies.
The said Gopal Goel – who turned out to be dreaded criminal Ranjit Mandal alias Ranjit Don – once again called the Sharmas on October 16 and 17. This time the Sharmas fell for the ruse, as the man spoke about government commissions and other intricacies of job at hand to establish his credential.
Suresh Sharma and his younger brother Kapil agreed to inspect the project site on a polytechnic institute at Haveli Kharagpur. The caller sent them tickets for Go-Air Flight G8 149 from New Delhi to Patna. And even before the flight took off, Suresh received an SMS on his mobile, which had the name of the driver, Ajit, and his mobile number. It all seemed so professional.
The flight landed at Patna around 6.10pm; and the driver received the two brothers in a Mahindra TUV vehicle. The vehicle kept moving for nearly two-and-a-half hours; and then the driver stopped his vehicle in an isolated area where eight armed persons were waiting for the Sharma brothers. They dragged the two out of the vehicle, tied their hands, covered their eyes and mouth with a piece of cloth and then bundled them to another vehicle, a Mahindra Scorpio. They were taken inside a dense forest, beaten up and then told they were kidnapped. The brothers still have injury marks on their chest, hands and back.
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| Sharma brothers after they were rescued by Bihar Police from the clutches of notorious kidnapper Ranjit Mandal, who's now absconding. [Photo: Agencies] |
It was just the beginning of their horror odyssey. The two brothers were initially kept in a single room and then shifted to an open field inside a thick forest. Confined to an open jungle, their hands tied, their mouth and eyes covered by bandage, the two brothers were given just one meal of puffed rice (murhi) in a day, made to sleep on grass and regularly beaten up. The abductors were very harsh, and their vigil unrelenting with seven persons, including two women, keeping guard.
Almost simultaneously, a special police team in Patna sieved through call records of the suspects. They soon discovered they had made several calls to one Narayan Yadav in Allahabad.
Narayan, however, turned out to be a victim. He too was kidnapped when he reached Barh (Patna district) in search of a non-existent contract on October 17 along. Narayan had reached with his nephew after they were lured into Bihar on the pretext of a huge waterproofing contract. The duo was confined in an abandoned warehouse in Bihar’s Lakhisarai district. One of them somehow managed to escape and reach Lakhisarai police, which rescued the other. But, the jarring irony is that the Bihar cops then did not lodge an FIR, which let Ranjit go off the hook. It bolstered him further to plan another kidnapping.
The similarity of the modus operandi of the two incidents assured the police that Ranjit was involved in the Sharma brothers' abduction case too. The abductors, on their part, operated with unmatched impunity. They went ahead with their plan to abduct the Sharma brothers unmindful of escape of the Narayan from their captivity.
Subsequent police investigations also revealed that the captors had used the same modus operandi earlier to abduct another businessman from Madhya Pradesh earlier this year. He too was brought to Lakhisarai and was released only after payment of ransom amount.
Having seen the Yadavs from Allahabad slip away because of their slackness, the captors this time were extremely vigilant with the Sharma brothers. Having demanded Rs 5 crore as ransom money for their release; the abductors also used the ATM cards of the two brothers to withdraw Rs 2.5 lakh from their bank accounts.
The cops finally closed in on the abductors on Tuesday night after days of painstaking investigation led them to the dense forest in Lakhisarai. The abductors first engaged them in an encounter. But, they were clearly outnumbered. Still hopeful to escape under the cover of darkness, the captors discussed shifting the two brothers in the middle of the gunfight. But they panicked when the police started shooting off tracer bombs in the air, which illuminated the entire vicinity and helped the cop locate the exact location of the captive.
In the last few minutes before their escape, Ranjit Mandal first told his men to inject the two brothers with drugs and then also discussed killing them. But as he was running out of time and as the police closed in, the mastermind left the spot, leaving the two brothers and five armed men behind. Soon, the cops reached and rescued them. The cops also recovered six pistols, 15 live cartridges, drugs and some food items from the spot, located in the hilly terrain of the Kajra forest, around 200km east of Patna.
Though the police arrested five of his associates, the abduction mastermind, Ranjit Mandal known as Ranjit Don, who managed to slip away, is still absconding.
The area from where the brothers were recovered is considered to be the hotbed of Maoists. In 2010, a Bihar Military Police jawan was killed while three other policemen were held captive by the rebels in this very area. It also confirmed the long-held suspicion that the criminals and Maoists have developed a working understanding between them. According to preliminary inputs, the captors had offered half of the ransom amount to Naxalites in lieu of using their safe hideout.
Earlier this year, the enforcement directorate had attached Ranjit's property in a money laundering Act. In his 12-year career in the world of crime, Ranjit Mandal is known to have committed several crimes using many pseudonyms. The Marwari speaking Gopal Goel was his latest.
On Thursday, the three recent victims of the abduction gang – all three who fell for similar baits – Suresh, Kapil and Narayan Yadav deposed their statements before a judicial magistrate in Patna before safely returning to their destinations.
As the judicial process rolls on, the cops are still looking for Ranjit Mandal. But their strenuous routine will surely slow them down in times to come. And then Ranjit Don will procure a new SIM card to reach out to someone he would consider abduction-worthy.
So if you are an established businessman or contractor outside Bihar, you know what to do if someone unknown calls you promising a lucrative contract in Bihar.
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