Indian kidnap group falls

Four Indian nationals and two Filipinos were arrested on Monday for the kidnapping of another Indian earlier this month.

“I wanted the money,” Shiv Chauhan, 23, said in an Inquirer interview on Tuesday, as he admitted plotting the abduction of his uncle, Chaman Lal, for a P30-million ransom.

Chauhan, a native of Punjab, India, had three more compatriots—Matwinder Singh and father-and-son Ashwani and Rakesh Kumar—who helped him kidnap their target on June 18 in GMA, Cavite province.

“I even helped (Chauhan) when he arrived in the Philippines. He would come to my house for food. I never thought he’d do this to me,” Lal, a businessman and money lender, said after his rescue.

Another relative of Lal reported the abduction to the National Bureau of Investigation, which then set a trap for the suspects and rescued Lal on Monday at Singh’s house in Metro Green, Novaliches.

The suspects’ two Filipino accomplices, Albin Pusos and John William Lucero, were arrested at that house. Singh was captured while attending to his pregnant wife in a Quezon City hospital, while Chauhan and the Kumars were tracked down in Alabang.

Lal said Pusos and Lucero kept him blindfolded and beat him up every day while in captivity.