Indian Police Rescues Two BTC Traders From Two-Week Long Captivity

Indian police safely returned the two bitcoin traders who were kept in captivity for more than two weeks in Jaipur. According to the latest cryptocurrency news, both of the traders were kidnapped alongside a non-profit employee.

The traders Luftan Shaikh and Mohammad Shahzad were kidnapped after the kidnappers demanded more than 80 bitcoins from their family members. A senior police officer from the Indian Police in Jaipur noted:

‘’The gang kidnapped Shaikh and Shazad, two bitcoin traders, and demanded 80 bitcoins worth 8 crore [about $115,000].’’

The three people who were kidnapped were held in captivity on a ninth-floor flat by one of the gang members. The group of kidnappers consists of eleven members seven of which were arrested while four managed to escape. The police tracked down the kidnappers while they were investigating a carjacking incident. While the victims were tortured and had to be taken for treatment after they were rescued, they received their happy ending compared to other high-profile cases where the abductors demanded a bitcoin ransom.

For example, the wife of the Norwegian Tom Hagen, Anne-Elisabeth Falkevik went missing in 2018. The kidnappers demanded more than $10 million to be paid in Monero which was actually done but still she is missing and suspected to have been killed. The American businessman William Sean Creighton was also kidnapped in Costa Rica in 2018 and his kidnappers demanded a bitcoin ransom of more than $1 million. The payment was sent but he is still missing more than a year later.

This story can have a very positive impact on the stance of the Indian government regarding regulating the crypto sectors. The government could become more crypto-friendly in order to stop these kinds of things happening. As noted in the altcoin news previously, India made it perfectly clear that it will remain hostile to cryptocurrencies despite their nature and purpose. This becomes really clear when India’s Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Garg noted that the world’s second most populous country will not welcome Facebook’s crypto project- the Libra cryptocurrency. The government explained that they are not comfortable with the abilities of the cryptocurrency.