Kidnapped businessman Akter Pradhan

Kidnapped businessman Akter Pradhan is badly beaten and bruised as kidnappers have him call who is presumed to be relatives, to demand a ransom payment. Picture: supplied

Cape Town – Shocking video footage of kidnapped Bangladeshi businessman has emerged online. It’s gruesome.

In the footage, businessman Akter Pradhan, 37, is handcuffed and blindfolded. His shirtless torso, bearing the bloodied scars of a beating is silent testimony to the horror he has endured since being kidnapped from Mitchells Plain last Friday.

“You can listen,” he pleads to his kidnappers.

“We are listening, talk brother,” one of his kidnappers said.

While mid-sentence, another kidnapper hits his chest with a hammer before his accomplice gives Pradhan a phone to talk to someone, presumably a relative.

“Give money,” Pradhan tells the voice at the other end of the line.

“I’m dead already. Already I am dead, give money,” he says.

This is part of the dramatic cellphone footage that has emerged of the businessman’s kidnapping. It is too graphic and too gruesome to show.

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Pradhan goes further, telling the person on the other end of the line to send money.

“If you want to save me, you can save me. Send money,” he says.

He further warns what is presumed to be a relative not to talk to the police.

“Don’t talk anything and don’t talk to the police. Just talk to the boss,” he pleads.

Footage is then zoomed in to show deep slashes on Pradhan’s right shoulder and the cuts down the left side of his back.

Pradhan can be heard pleading with the person on the phone to not speak about anything else.

“Me also, me also,” he says.

One of the kidnappers can then be heard saying, in a hoarse voice, “R20 million. I want R20 million!”

Provincial police have stated there are no new developments in Pradhan’s kidnapping case but said their investigation is ongoing. IOL