"Operation Desert Safari" continues...

The first and foremost job was to get the Director, CBI to assign this case, which in the normal course would have gone to a Special Crimes Unit to me. PC Sharma
immediately got that done and the fax sent by our Ambassador in the UAE to the Director, CBI reached my desk in minutes. But, to my horror, the two relatives, who had come to liaise with us, did not want registration of a formal case. They perhaps didn’t wish to get involved in going through the full run of the Indian legal system. Their expectation was to secure Thekkat’s release
without getting into legal formalities. This coming from one of the relatives, who was a former Police officer, was particularly distressing. However, we were very clear; a complaint had been received from our Ambassador and we had no option but to register a case. A case of abduction for ransom with threat to cause death (Section 364-A of the Indian Penal Code) and criminal
conspiracy (Sec 120-B IPC) was registered on March 16 and investigation taken up. The joint operation of the CBI and the Special Cell of the Delhi Police to rescue Thekkat Sidhique was code named Operation Desert Safari.

Five days after Thekkat had been abducted, my mobile phone rang late in the evening. It was Sidhique's brother Koya. Thekkat had been made to speak to him by the kidnappers to disclose the ransom amount. During the conversation, Thekkat had managed to speak a few words in his mother tongue Malayalam (language spoken in the state of Kerala). He had cleverly managed to slip in a few stray and incoherent bits of information while talking to his brother: he was being held hostage on the second floor of a building in the vicinity of a shop
with phone number 6683899; also, he could hear aircraft flying right over his head all the time; and a public telephone booth was located close by.

I immediately rang up 197, the public phone enquiry number; to ascertain the address where a phone with the number 6683899 was installed.

To be continued...