This is the third kidnapping in the greater Maputo area in the space of five days. Shopkeeper Kishoor Chootalal was seized in the commercial centre of Maputo on Friday, and on Sunday morning a man named Nasser Momad was kidnapped at his home in the Bunhica neighbourhood of Matola city.
Like Chootalal, Subash is a shopkeeper. He owns the “Rajani” shop which sells capulanas, the brightly coloured fabrics worn by Mozambican women. His shop is in Filipe Samuel Magaia Avenue – exactly the same street as Chootalal’s establishment, the “Casa Pandia”.
Subash was grabbed outside his house, as he was returning from his shop. The kidnappers fired into the air with an AK-47 assault rifle, to dissuade anyone from going to their victim’s assistance.
The kidnapping took place in one of the most heavily guarded parts of the city, close to the US Embassy and to the headquarters of the Mozambican security service, SISE.
Subash’s wife threatened to go on a hunger strike, until her husband is returned. “I won’t eat. I won’t sleep, I won’t drink even a drop of water, until my husband is back”, she told reports.
If the kidnappers wanted money, she added, “then they should work, like we do”.
Earlier in the day, before the latest abduction, a spokesperson for the General Command of the police, Joao Machava, said the police believed the kidnapping in Matola was “a settling of accounts”.
“Apart from kidnapping their victim, their main goal was to seize the mobile phone that he used”, he said. “But they didn’t manage to take it. Right now the police is in possession of the phone”.
He believed that the information stored on the phone might lead the police to the kidnappers.
He added that Momad’s girlfriend, and the owner of the Bunhica house which he had been renting, are cooperating with the police investigation.
Machava condemned attempts by some local people to steal goods from the house after the kidnapping. The police took into protection two vehicles, and hi-fi equipment which the thieves had already taken out of the house by the time the police arrived.
Post published in: Africa News