MAPUTO – Another kidnapping has occurred despite the country’s new legislation to combat this crime. According to media on Thursday, the latest victim is Mr Davda Umedkumar Mohanlal (58), the managing partner in a petrol station at Macia, in the southern province of Gaza.
According to a report in the daily paper Noticias, Mohanlal was abducted on the evening of April 12 when he had just returned home from the petrol station. Eyewitnesses said he was seized by four armed men driving a grey Toyota.
The paper said the kidnappers had contacted the family warning them not to involve the police if they wanted to see Mohanlal alive again. They apparently demanded a ransom and told the family to pay it in Maputo. This led to speculation that the gang had driven from Maputo to Macia with the sole intention of abducting Mohanlal. The ransom demand had not yet been revealed. So far the Mozambique police had not commented on the case.
The Bill to combat kidnapping had been passed and drafted by the parliamentary group of the ruling Frelimo Party last year. It said, “Anyone who by means of violence, threats, or any fraud, kidnaps another person, for the purpose of extortion, rape, ransom or reward” will be punished by a jail term from 12 to 16 years.
The penalty would rise from 16 to 20 years if serious harm was done to the victim, or if the abduction was accompanied “by torture or other cruel, degrading or inhumane treatment”. This longer term also applied in cases where the person kidnapped was a child, pregnant woman, disabled or seriously ill, and where the abductors were a public servant, or was pretending to be an agent of authority.
This would apply to policemen involved in kidnapping gangs.
If the snatching resulted in the death of the victim, the prison term would rise from 20 to 24 years. For “heinous crime” cases the penalty would then be 40 years’ imprisonment.
This Bill had been rushed through due to the spate of kidnapping that had been occurring in Mozambican cities since 2011.
Mr Nazir Loonat, spokesman for the Islamic community in Maputo, said families were losing hope. They had employed investigators from all over the world, handed over all the evidence to officials and nothing had been done.
So far there have been nearly 80 cases of abductions and not one of them have been solved before ransom demands have been made.
Earlier this year, a suspected mastermind of kidnapping was shot and killed. Read more here.
