Kidnappings on the rise

So we repeat a question which has been asked by many others — how is this possible in a small country like ours? Kidnapping is a crime that requires significant planning and organisation. The perpetrators must observe their intended victims for a significant amount of time to get to know their schedules. They must follow the persons around in order to get an opportunity to snatch them. They must have a place where the victim can be held without arousing suspicion. And then they must arrange to demand and collect a ransom.

As with any operation, the more steps there are, the more chances there are of something going wrong. Yet this rarely happens with kidnappers. This suggests not only a high level of planning, but a well-connected network. And, clearly, the police have not been able to penetrate these networks. But that is understandable — informants are not easy to come by in any type of crime, and probably less so when the crime is so organised. What is not so understandable is why the police have not been able to hold the kidnappers when the ransom is paid.

Is it that the families do not cooperate? Is it that the kidnappers’ pick-up arrangements foil any attempts to detect them? Is it that the police do not know how to go about setting up such an operation? These are questions which need answering. After all, the answers which are already floating around are discomfiting ones — people alleging, for example, that the kidnappers could not carry out their nefarious acts so easily unless they had crucial contacts in banks and, more worryingly, in the Police Service. Two Special Reserve policemen have been held in connection with the Nath kidnappings and the three men who attempted to get Ms Jagdeo were reportedly dressed in bulletproof police vests.

If this particular crime isn’t contained, and soon, the consequences may be dire. It already seems as though several business people have packed, or are planning to pack, their bags and start a new life in safer countries. Those business people who are staying cannot be as productive as they would wish, since they must limit their movements and hours of business. Most recently, there has been a call for "Indian" business people to take their security into their own hands — a call which is entirely understandable, but which can easily escalate to vigilantism and which will probably not prevent the kidnapping of mid-level business people anyway. And, behind all this, is a gnawing insecurity on the part of citizens which eats away at the societal stability.

It is clear that whatever the authorities are doing isn’t working well enough. They need to ask why, and to adopt a new approach. All it will take is for a few kidnappers to be caught red-handed to considerably reduce this crime, if not eliminate it completely.