Grassy Park man kidnapped

A 35-year-old Grassy Park man is the second foreign businessman to be kidnapped in Cape Town in a month.

Mustafa Goolam, a Bangladeshi national runs Food Town, between Zeekoe Road and Fifth Avenue in Lotus River, just around the corner from where he stays.

He was locking up at about 9pm on Sunday, when two men attacked him and forced him into a gold Toyota Corolla with a CY licence plate.

According to Hanif Loonat, cluster chairman of the Mitchell’s Plain Community Police Forum, the kidnappers called Mr Goolam’s brother on Monday December 5 afternoon with a ransom demand of R11 million but dropped the amount to R10 million.

Mr Loonat said the ransom had not been paid yet because the family did not have money.

According to Mr Loonat, witnesses had described how two or three men had approached Mr Goolam and pointed a gun at him. He had run to the corner of the L-shaped building where the kidnappers grabbed him and bundled him into their car.

Mr Loonat said provincial police commissioner Lieutenant General Khombinkosi Jula had formed a crack squad to investigate the kidnapping of foreign nationals.

Mr Loonat said Mr Goolam had previously been threatened.

“The community takes it very seriously and we will get to the bottom of this. We cannot allow this to go on anymore they have been terrorising these foreign nationals for far too long,” he said.

Mr Loonat families often did not report cases to the police because they were scared of retribution especially because they had families overseas.

Grassy Park police spokeswoman Warrant Officer Wynita Kleinsmith said police were investigating and the kidnappers were still at large.

Last month, the Southern Mail’s sister newspaper, Athlone News, reported on the kidnapping of business man Naushad Khan, 46, who was abducted by five men while locking up his shop, Khan’s Punjabies, in Hadji Ebrahim Cresent, in Athlone. Mr Khan has still not been found.