Margao based businessman Ruben Vernekar and his advocate refuted allegations of kidnapping that were made against him and instead accused the complainant in the case of orchestrating the kidnapping to blame him and avoid repaying the Rs 3-crore that he owes him on account of a agreement to sell a shop. Addressing the media, Advocate Kapil Vernekar, who represented Ruben, said that the alleged kidnapping was manufactured because Ruben has been seeking the Rs 3-crore that was paid in exchange for the shop to be repaid to him.
“There was an agreement between Ruben Vernekar and the complainant that they were to sell their shop to him and the price was agreed upon. They sought Rs 3-crores which was paid to them, cheque payments, acknowledgements and receipts are with us. And now, when we are asking them to do the sale deed, they are delaying and postponing and till date the sale deed has not been signed and when we asked for the money back, they orchestrated the incident -- to portray my client as a criminal and they wanted to defraud my client of that money,” Adv Kapil Vernekar said.

“Ruben is a very reputed businessman, and a person with no criminal antecedents whatsoever. He has a business standing and a repute in the market, with no criminal antecedents. And his family for the past 40 years is in the goldsmith business and his father and he have a standing in Margao. A false accusation has been made against this individual by another family in the goldsmith business -- the complainant alleged that Ruben, at gunpoint attempted to abduct him, when the complainant was dropping his child off to school and that Reuben was the mastermind behind this,” Adv Kapil added.
“The police interrogated him continuously for three days, by the PI, DySP, SP and we have continuously told them that we have nothing to do with this incident and that they should check whether this incident actually took place or was orchestrated. Importantly, that magazine of the gun that was used in the threatening to abduct, was not recovered from the scene”.