Officials of the Nigeria Navy on Friday rescued three Indian expatriates kidnapped in Bayelsa State where they work for C F Offshore.
Kidnapped since 5th March 2014, they were rescued from a hideout in Ajudaigbo, Warri South West Local Government Area of Delta State, where they have been kept since their abduction.
The news is coming on the same day the Nigerian Navy also arrested 12 Nigerians in Calabar, Cross Rivers State for possessing bags of contraband as well as hard drugs.
Explaining how the abducted Indians were rescued, Commander of the Nigeria Navy Ship, NNS Delta, Captain Musa Gemu, who handed the victims, Ratan Debnath, Manjeet Gahlawat and Mayank Saini, chief engineer, captain and chief officer respectively to the company officials in Warri, said they were kidnapped 70 nautical miles, off Brass, from a merchant ship.
He said the rescue operation was facilitated by the Delta Waterways Security Committee in Warri, which presented the Navy with all the needed information about the abduction, adding that from information available, the Indians were kidnapped for ransom.
He however said no money was paid to rescue them, though none of the kidnappers was arrested “because they fled and abandoned the hostages when they sighted our men approaching”.
He said items discovered by his men in the kidnappers’ hide-out include outboard engine and personal belongings of the foreigners, which were removed from the ship.
Saini, one of the victims, said the armed kidnappers came in a speedboat and shooting sporadically.
“They ordered us to enter their boat. They took us inside a forest”, he said, describing it as a rough experience that he would not wish for anybody.
In the Calabar incident, the 12 people arrested were said to have loaded a large wooden boat with 3,000 bales of textile materials, 20 bags of shoes, 100 bags of rice and 10 cartons of substances suspected to be hard drugs, according to the Navy, which gave the glory to its NNS Victory, Calabar.
The Navy described the suspects as smugglers from neighbouring Cameroon aiming to sell the materials in markets around the south-south and southeast states of the country.
Handing the contraband to officials of the Nigerian Customs Service, Commodore Fredrick Ogu, Commanding Officer of the NNS Victory said the suspects were seven Cameroonians and five Nigerians.
He explained that his officers confronted the boat in the high sea while on routine patrol on Thursday night. He also said the patrol was sequel to instructions from the Chief of Naval Staff for the officers to bring illegal activities, such as bunkering, pipeline vandalisation and piracy in the maritime zone under control.
Noting that smuggling remains an economic sabotage, he said his decision to hand over the contrabands to the Customs officers and the smugglers to the Nigerian Immigration Service was because they are agencies with the powers to continue from where he had stopped.
He said he would continue to do his best to curtail the activities of smugglers in the area.
Comptroller Immigration Service in Calabar, Mr. Samuel Oguche promised to continue with investigation and if found to have entered Nigeria illegally, they would be prosecuted.
