Four more held in gold smuggler kidnap case

Coimbatore: Four more people have been arrested for their involvement in kidnapping a gold smuggler at Palladam in Tirupur district a few days ago.
The accused were identified as Karthik, 39, of Coimbatore, Mohammed Salman, 43, of Tiruvadanai, Sargunam, 48, of Pudukkottai and Raghu, 30, of Ramanathapuram district. They were nabbed on Sunday. While Karthik was a police constable, he was relieved from the service a few years ago, a police officer said.
The officer said a seven-member gang had kidnapped S Maheswaran, 33, of Tiruvadanai, thinking he had stolen 5kg gold ingots that he had smuggled from Sri Lanka a few months ago.“He had told them that he had abandoned the gold ingots after seeing police personnel. They had invested lakhs of rupees on smuggling gold and they didn’t believe him.”
Maheswaran, who was working under a BJP functionary in Ramanathapuram district, had moved to Ammapalayam in Tirupur city and took up a job as an acting car driver.
The gang traced Maheswaran’s whereabouts and kidnapped him near Palladam on Thursday. The gang, the officer said, had already kidnapped two of his friends S Veeramani 28 and Azhagar, 33, on Wednesday. “They were held in captive in Dindigul district. The trio managed to escape from the gang on Friday.”
Based on Maheswaran’s complaint, the Palladam police had registered a case and arrested Yasser Arafat and Mohammed Rizwan, of Ramanathapuram district, and Rajeswaran, a cop attached to the Coimbatore city armed reserve police, on Saturday. tnn