Novelist and scion of the royal family of erstwhile Travancore, Shreekumar Varma, who was freed from a gang of abductors in Senegal, Africa, while on a private visit there, reached home here safe and sound on Thursday, his family said on Friday.
Mr. Varma left for Dakar on January 18 to negotiate the sale of a work by the legendary 19th century painter Raja Ravi Varma, in the family’s art collection, when he was abducted on January 23 and held hostage by a gang.
His release on January 29 came about after a tightly-guarded and delicate operation that involved diplomats at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, the Indian Embassy in Dakar, the Senegalese Interior Ministry, the armed forces and the local police. “It was an emotionally intense time for our family, while we were out of contact with our father and put in the bizarre and terrifying position of having to stall and negotiate with a set of hardened international criminals,” the writer’s sons, Vinayak Varma and Karthik Varma, stated in a Facebook post on Friday. They confirmed that a huge ransom was demanded which “we could not possibly have paid and, indeed, ultimately did not have to, thanks to the exemplary actions of the MEA and the Senegalese police”. The post clarifies that neither Mr. Varma carried any rare paintings to Senegal nor did he harbour any intention of “flouting any Indian laws or carrying out any illegal transaction”.
“It just so happened that our father…was conned by some very clever miscreants into entering a situation that he had not adequately researched,” they stated. The writer’s sons make a plea against referencing the abduction to portray Senegal as a dangerous country.
