Hostage drama at BJP leader's house

PANCHKULA: It was a nightmare come true for the BJP���s district chief Sham Lal Sachdeva���s family. A gang of highway robbers first kidnapped his son, Samir, grandson and wife while they were returning from Delhi and then drove them to their Panchkula house where they held the family hostage for hours on early Saturday morning.
Samir said the robbers kidnapped them while he was driving somewhere between Karnal and Pipli on late Friday night.������Gun-wielding men travelling in a silver Honda CRV (DL2CAH-1428) signalled me to stop. As soon as I stepped out, two of them rushed towards me and pulled me in their SUV,������ he said. The other two robbers got on to his Mercedes and drove away his son Sumedh, 18, and mother. The heavily armed men also fired several shots in the air.
������Two of them were speaking in Haryanvi, another one named Manjeet was talking in Punjabi, while the fourth one spoke Mumbai dialect,������ Sumedh told TOI. He said the robbers asked them about their family���s fortune. ������Whatever I told them, they got it double-checked from my father,������ he said. Samir said the robbers had tied them and as as soon they reached home, he was asked to call his father.
Around 2.45am on Saturday, Sham Lal got the call. ������Samir called saying they were waiting outside the house. There was nothing unusual about the call as he often comes for weekends to Panchkula,������ Sachdeva said. Sachdeva said as he opened the door, four gun-toting men were standing outside with their weapons pointed at his son, wife and grandson. ������The robbers confined us to a corner of the house and asked us to also call our tenants, who stay in the annexe,������ Sumedh said. The move, however, backfired as the tenant Ritu raised an alarm as soon as she saw the gun-wielding men. Ritu ran to the annexe���s top floor and shouted for help. This unnerved the robbers, who immediately fled the house, taking the family���s Mercedes and some valuables with them.