Whenever Sumedha Durlabhji entered the campus of the Rajasthan University in Jaipur, the serenity of the place struck her. The 60-year-old wife of Jaipur's "Emerald King", Rashmikant Durlabhji, who is one of Rajasthan's biggest jewellers, enjoyed walking through the campus early in the morning because it was so quiet. And safe. So safe that she usually asked the guard accompanying her to go back.

END OF ORDEAL: Sumedha (second from left) with her son Mehul, daughter Manisha and husband Rashmikant after she was rescued from her kidnappers by the police

This calm was shattered on February 6 when Sumedha was kidnapped by four men in a car. Sumedha had asked the guard to return home and was walking alone when a blue Esteem stopped by her side. Three persons got off, pushed her into the car at gunpoint, and sped away. It was 5.40 a.m. A kilometre away, three others were sitting in an Indica, keeping a watch for any signs of trouble. The Esteem sped its way out of the Pink City. Within 15 minutes it was on the Delhi-Jaipur highway. In another three hours, by the time Sumedha's family informed the police that she might have been kidnapped, it had reached Faridabad around 250 km away. A little later, the Durlabhjis got the first call for ransom. The demand: Rs 2.5 crore.

A car without a number plate is not a clinching clue. But that was all the police officials working on the case had. The vigil team had abandoned the Indica at Jaipur's Bani Park before making off in a bus. Going by its chassis number, the police found that the Indica belonged to one of the two engineers who had been kidnapped from Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh on December 14 last year and taken to Rourkela in Orissa. The two engineers were rescued after a gang member, Umesh Singh, was arrested for an earlier crime and spilled the beans. The Indica, last seen with a gang member named Rakesh Singh, was never recovered.

BIG CATCH: The kidnappers; the car they used

For the Rajasthan Police, this was a crucial breakthrough. Its request for more information on Rakesh yielded results when the Delhi Police and the Intelligence Bureau identified Ajay Singh as one of his accomplices. Ajay is the son of Mangal Singh, a retired DSP, and is considered to be close to former prime minister Chandra Shekhar. He unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections on an SJP ticket from Chatra (now in Jharkhand) in 1991.

The Delhi Police monitored all phone calls to the Durlabhji family. But it was almost impossible to keep count of the different numbers being used to make the calls. The kidnappers were changing SIM cards regularly to cover their tracks. "We zeroed in on four telephone numbers," reveals Ravi Shankar, ACP, Delhi Police. The police were able to pinpoint the location of the cell phones being used. It was a flat in Delhi's Vasant Kunj colony.

Meanwhile, in a house in Faridabad's Sector 19, Sumedha was living out her worst nightmare. Confined to a small room, her only contact with the outside world was the noise of vehicles speeding past besides an occasional breeze of fresh air coming through the window. Initially, she had refused to eat but when one of her captors threatened to shift her to a worse place, she agreed to have fruits, juice and coffee, but no grains. There were no newspapers or magazines but there was a TV. "I watched a lot of cricket," she chuckles.

At one time, the kidnappers wanted Sumedha to give contact numbers of some relatives because her family's phones were being tapped. She gave them a few numbers and even wrote a letter to her family. The three gangsters who visited the house frequently with their faces masked had initially said that she would be released within two or three days. But as the days kept passing, Sumedha started losing hope.

So when the door of her room flung open on February 24 and three men charged in, she was dumbfounded. "Sumedhaji, I am from the police and you must leave with us immediately," said DSP Umedh Singh in a voice as soft as was possible in the situation. As the Delhi Police team accompanying the Rajasthan Police official overpowered her captors, Sumedha sat transfixed.

Locating Sumedha and identifying the gang was the most challenging part of the investigation. A joint team of the Delhi Police and Rajasthan Police had kept a watch on the Vasant Kunj flat. It was crucial to pick up the suspects without their being able to alert their accomplices which may have put Sumedha at risk. One day, when two of the suspects came out, they were followed by the police and apprehended.

The push came when the police got a tip-off that prime suspect Ajay's wife Anita Singh was coming to the flat with her son and brother Manish Singh, also a suspect. As the door opened for them, commandos pushed their way in and cornered Ajay. Fearing for the safety of his wife and son, Ajay revealed where Sumedha was being held captive. The team then stormed the Faridabad house and Sumedha was rescued. In all, eight gangsters have been arrested. Four of them are from Gangoi village in Chatra district. Two others are from Balia in Uttar Pradesh. Dhananjay Singh, who works for Reliance Infocomm and was an expert on cell phones, is from Vaishali in Bihar and is the son of a former Janata Dal MLA.

The rescue comes as a big relief for the Ashok Gehlot Government. The issue dominated the front pages of dailies in Rajasthan for 18 days. Police departments of 10 states worked in tandem to rescue Sumedha. As Gehlot said, "It is the success of the National Police Force." If only other states had worked as a team, maybe H. Nagappa would still be alive.

-with Farzand Ahmed