Kidnapped for ransom, 26/11 survivor Gautam Adani faces his biggest challenge yet

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Asia’s richest man and Adani Group founder Gautam Adani was kidnapped by bandits in 1998 for ransom and when terrorists attacked Mumbai almost 11 years later, he was among the hostages held at the seafront Taj Hotel. A college dropout with a knack for surviving crises and his business acumen has propelled him to the ranks of India’s richest but he now faces possibly the biggest challenge of his career.

He dropped from being the world’s third-richest person to the eighth. Adani’s seven listed companies have lost about $65 billion in total since Hindenburg Research on January 24 raised concerns about the coal-to-ports group’s high debt levels and the use of offshore entities in tax havens, charges the group has denied.

By the mid-1990s, his business successes started attracting attention, including the unwelcome kind. On January 1, 1998, Adani and his associate Shantilal Patel were abducted at gunpoint after they left Karnavati Club in Ahmedabad in a car.

They were held allegedly by gangsters Fazlu Rehman and Bhogilal Darji alias Mama (who were later acquitted for lack of evidence) for a reported $1.5-2 million ransom. Both were let off a day later but it is not known if the ransom was paid.

Also Read | Gautam Adani: the Indian tycoon weathering stock market panic

On November 26, 2008, he was dining at Mumbai’s iconic Taj Hotel with Dubai Port CEO Mohammed Sharaf. As he was about to exit after paying bills, a few associates called for a second round of meeting over a cup of coffee. That’s when terrorists attacked, which killed 160.

Adani, who along with other guests was escorted first to the hotel kitchen and then to the basement by the staff, later said he would have been caught in the attack had he made it to the exit after paying bills for the dinner.

Adani spent the night in the basement and then in a hall before being rescued by commandos the next morning. After landing at the Ahmedabad airport in his private aircraft on November 27, Adani had said, “I saw death at a distance of just 15 feet.”

Hindenburg Research has rejected Adani Group’s charge that its report was an attack on India, saying a “fraud” cannot be obfuscated by nationalism or a bloated response that ignored response to key allegations.

Commenting on the 413-page response Adani Group released late on Sunday evening in response to its report, Hindenburg said it believed India was a vibrant democracy and an emerging superpower with an exciting future and it was Adani Group which was holding it back through “systematic loot”.

Hindenburg stood by its last week’s report that said its two-year investigation found Adani Group “engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades”.

(With PTI/AFP inputs)