A 56-year-old driver, Henry alias Hariharan, who claimed to have been abducted “at gun point” by “Hindi-speaking” men on Friday morning, returned home on Saturday night only to eventually admit that he had left home owing to debts.
The police said that the man, who was the driver for a BJP functionary, came back to Sattur on Saturday night.
He initially claimed that he was bundled into a car and gun-totting men speaking Hindi, took him to Madurai. After getting him meals, they blind-folded him and took him some 100 miles away to a farm in an unidentified place that looked like Theni district.
“They threatened me with dire consequences that I should not be working against the BJP. They also said that they need to teach a lesson to two more persons who were against the party,” he told the police.
The man claimed that he was later dropped in the district.
However, by this time, the Sattur town police had registered a case of abduction. A team led by the Sattur Deputy Superintendent of Police, S. Ramakrishnan, formed special teams to track down the “abducted” person.
Ten Inspectors of Police and 200 men had fanned out across the district and to the neighbouring districts to investigate the case.
“Had we not got five video footages that showed this man boarding one bus after another at five different places in Sattur town and Virudhunagar, we would have been left with no option but to believe in his words,” the DSP said.
After the police revealed that they had the video footages, the man spilled the beans stating that he left home owing to family problems, including debts.
The man who came to Virudhunagar from Sattur by a bus on Friday, later left for Thanjavur and from there went to Velankanni. He had returned home after offering prayers there.