Police assets confirm sightings of missing businessman
Eighteen days into a widened search for alleged kidnapped victim James Ardaña of Sibalom, Antique and authorities here have no suspects to name.
In fact, if latest police investigation is to be considered, probers need not look far with the supposed victim now reported to have staged his own kidnapping.
As such, “kidnap me” theory and scenario is currently being validated as police assets went back with purported positive sightings of Ardaña.
In a report, The News Today (TNT) gathered that the information has reached Senior Superintendent Ren Darroca, Antique Provincial Police Office (APPO) Director.
First sighting, a TNT source said, was in the northern town of Bugasong. Another police asset followed with a report days thereafter. This time, the asset said, it was Ardaña himself who purportedly showed up in one of the family-run business establishments in Dalipe, San Jose, Antique.
Senior Superintendent Darroca in an interview with Bombo Radyo Iloilo over the weekend confirmed the report.
Said sightings, Darroca disclosed, actually happened several times already since the supposed kidnapping late Holy Thursday evening. Further still came reports from other civilian informants that Ardaña was spotted to have also returned to the family home, about a kilometer away from the “crime scene.”
Yet the family maintains it was a real kidnapping. Such, as the businessman’s wife Gloria told probers that from the initial P15 million ransom demanded, the amount was significantly decreased to P4 million.