Indian businessman abducted in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - After a bungled attempt to kidnap him four years ago, gunmen succeeded in abducting Indian trader Mike Khemani in aN attack here Tuesday night that left one of his bodyguards dead and another wounded.

Responding policemen and members of the 1st Marine Battalion found abandoned the kidnappers’ getaway car in a busy spot at the city proper after an extensive search.

Witnesses said some five kidnappers grabbed Khemani, 57, while in front of Sugni Superstore along a busy street near the city’s old market and herded him at gunpoint into a waiting car parked nearby.

Khemani owns the Sugni Superstore here, which has branches in Kidapawan City and in Kabacan town in the first district of North Cotabato.

Two of the kidnappers traded shots with Khemani’s guards  just as the others forced him into the car, which responding policemen and Marine combatants later found near a riverside district here, not far from a pumpboat dock.

One of the Khemani’s bodyguards, Abdul Kaura, was killed in the ensuing gunfight, while another, Mustapha Abdulrahim, was wounded. 

Senior Supt. Rolen Balquin, director of the Cotabato City police, said they have recovered the kidnappers’ black car, bearing license plates MCW 692.

Khemani was reportedly spirited by his captors to a riverside district not far from the spot where he was snatched, transferred him to a waiting motorized banca, which sailed upstream to the city’s eastern area.

Col. Dickson Hermoso, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the units of the 6th ID in Maguindanao have been directed to help guard rivers  in the province to prevent  the kidnappers from possibly escaping deeper into the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta.

Kidnappers had tried to abduct Khemani at the uptown area here about four years ago, but failed when police escorts of Judge Bansawan Ibrahim, who were near the scene, engaged them in a gunfight, forcing  the kidnappers to retreat.

Two of the kidnappers were reported wounded in the ensuing encounter.

Fraternal brothers here of Khemani in the Free Masonry, among them Chinese merchants and local executives, have appealed to his captors to set him free.

Khemani daily takes maintenance medicines for various ailments. -  John Unson