Buziwe Nocuze
Three Bangladeshi shopkeepers who were kidnapped more than two weeks ago have been released after a ransom of R120,000 was paid.
In horrifying accounts of their imprisonment, they say they were kept naked and beaten every time their relatives told the kidnappers that they didn’t have the ransom money.
The three victims, who wish to remain anonymous for their own protection, say they were also burnt with burning plastic and fed only two slices of bread daily.
The three victims were abducted in Samora Machel in Cape Town on 17 June. The three men, two of whom are brothers, were returning from the mall where they were buying stock when they were abducted.
After 14 harrowing days, they were released on Friday.
A family member of one of the victims who also didn’t want to be named told Scrolla.Africa that the men were kept in Khayelitsha and dropped off in Macassar to find their way home.
At first, the kidnappers demanded R5 million, but the Bangladeshi community in Cape Town told them they did not have that kind of money as the victims were only running fish-and-chip shops.
“It was not easy to raise the money because we do not have it lying around, and it is sad that people think that we have lots of it,” said the family member.
The victims haven’t gone to the police because they are traumatised, and their families want to get them counselling. So instead, they have been taken to hospital.
Bangladeshi shopkeepers have previously said they are targeted because criminals assume they make a lot of money from their spaza shops.
