Kidnappers' share crash woes

Subject: Kidnappers' share crash woes Tue Nov 25, 2008 6:08 pm

TWO desperate business administration students are alleged to have gone to extreme lengths to recoup money lost during the sharemarket wipe-out triggered by the global financial crisis.

Police say Piyush Jain and Rohit Chopra, both 24, and management students from Delhi, and Bharat Jhamb, a businessman, abducted a boy, 15, and demanded a ransom of 8 million rupees ($250,000) from his family. The ransom was equivalent to the amount Jain and Chopra had lost playing the sharemarket.

The three are accused of hiring a gangster to help them kidnap the boy and detain him in an arranged hideout in the city of Gurgaon, near Delhi.

The victim, Arjun Verma, was walking to school in South Delhi on Thursday morning when he was approached and asked for directions. After he was persuaded to get into a car he was taken to a hideout, police said.

Jain and Chopra had then made about 20 calls to the boy's mother using mobile phones with SIM cards registered under fake names demanding the ransom. During the phone calls they talked of their heavy sharemarket losses, police said, and the family were given 10 days to come up with the ransom.

About 20 hours after abducting Arjun, the kidnappers feared the police were in pursuit and dumped him on the outskirts of Delhi at 3am, bound and gagged. A passer-by on his way home from a wedding found the distressed victim and drove him home.

The police have since arrested six men, including the two business students, over the abduction.

Police said Jain and Chopra had told them their sharemarket losses had driven them to crime. "They were desperate for cash," the Hindustan Times quoted a police officer as saying.

The two management students come from relatively wealthy families. Jain's father is a successful graphic designer and Chopra's father is a manager in a Delhi five-star hotel.

Police said the accomplice of the two students, Bharat Jhamb, was a cousin of the victim embittered by a family property dispute.

The Indian sharemarket has lost more than half its value this year amid the global financial turmoil.

LNK

Subject: Re: Kidnappers' share crash woes Tue Nov 25, 2008 6:30 pm

Most original 'hedge' position I ever heard of...

Lost on your shares? No problem, just kidnap someone!

Dumb & Dumber

Kidnappers' share crash woes

Kidnappers' share crash woes

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