Gang planned to kidnap actress, demand huge ransom: Kerala Police
Kochi: A gang of impostors, arrested for allegedly threatening and trying to extort money from a South Indian actress, had planned to kidnap and hold her hostage and demand a huge ransom, a top police official said on Tuesday.
Eight of the 12 member gang, which hatched the conspiracy and tried to execute their plan have been arrested, while the other four are absconding, City Police Commissioner Vijay Sakhare said
"The gang of imposters, which established contact with Shamna Kasim and her family after coming up with a marriage proposal for her, had hatched a plan to kidnap the actress, hold her hostage in a hotel room and demand a huge ransom.
But it did not materialise," he told PTI.
Police said the gang had kept several models in their captivity after inviting them for assignments and extorted money from them. Their success prompted them to go in for a bigger operation and try to extort money from an actress like Shamna, police said.
They said the gang managed to collect details of the actress from those in the film industry after convincing them that they planned to produce movies.
The arrested gang members are also accused of keeping eight women, working as models, in their captivity in Palakkad in March and extorting money from them
Police have registered seven cases against the gang on the basis of separate complaints filed by Shamna and other models.
Widening the probe to the Malayalam film industry, police had on Monday summoned and taken the statements of popular comedian Dharmajan Bolgatty, whom some of the arrested gang members had allegedly contacted during the lockdown.
Police, however, clarified that the film personalities do not have any role in the episode.
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Small plane crashes in rural area of northeast Colombia, killing all 15 people on board
Bogota (AP): A small plane crashed Wednesday in a rural area of Norte de Santander province in northeast Colombia, killing all 15 people on board, authorities said.
Satena, the state-owned airline that operated the flight, said local officials in the community of Curasica notified authorities about where the plane had gone down and a rescue team was deployed to “assess the condition of the passengers.”
Colombia's Transportation Ministry later released a statement saying that “once the aircraft was located on site, authorities regrettably confirmed that there were no survivors.”
The aircraft, which has a registration number of HK4709, took off at 11:42 am local time from the airport in Cucuta, the department's capital, bound for Ocana, a municipality surrounded by mountains, on a flight that typically lasts about 40 minutes.
The aircraft's final contact with air traffic control came minutes after takeoff, according to a statement released by Satena.
The small plane was carrying two crew members and 13 passengers, including Diogenes Quintero, who represents the victims of the internal armed conflict in his region, the airline said.
