Businessman leaves Mozambique after extortion and threats of being kidnapped again

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Businessman leaves Mozambique after extortion and threats of being kidnapped again

12:33 CAT | 28 Jul 2020

Indian businessman and philanthropist Rizwan Adatia, who was kidnapped and held captive for 21 days in May, has left Mozambique after repeated attempts at extortion and threats of a second kidnapping, a source close to the victim told Lusa on Monday.

The source said that Rizwan Adatia had left Maputo for India, with his family.

“Even after he was released, he was still threatened with demands that he would have to pay if he wanted to remain free,” said the same source.

Rizwan Adatia was released from captivity by authorities in May in a neighbourhood in the district of Boane, Maputo province, and will now assess the future of his business and humanitarian interests in Mozambique in the light of the threats.

The businessman is a patron and financier of the Adatia Foundation, an entity which participates in 18 strategic partnerships, benefiting around 740,700 people in Africa and Asia.

In addition to the foundation, Rizwan Adatia heads the Maputo-based Cogef retail group, which has 35 wholesale supermarkets, 190 stores, four industrial units and more than 3,500 employees in nine African countries.

The same day that Adatia was released, Manish Cantilal, another businessman, was released after 91 days in captivity.

A short time afterwards, in late June, Kauchal Pandia, the son of the owner of the well-known ‘Casa Pandia’ fabric store in Maputo, was kidnapped in the centre of the capital. There have been no public developments in the case since then.

The victim’s father, Kishoor Chootalal, was kidnapped in Maputo in 2014 by four armed men, but released a few weeks later in circumstances that were never clarified.

After a wave of kidnappings in Mozambique’s main cities which peaked between 2012 and 2013, the number of cases dropped, but has recently started rising again.

Since the beginning of 2020, Mozambican authorities have recorded a total of eight kidnappings, the victims of which are always businessmen or their family members.

Source: Lusa