The dangers of being Asia’s second richest man: Gautam Adani was once kidnapped for ransom and held hostage, but the Indian billionaire will never forget the heroes who saved him

Jun 22 , 2021

Gautam Adani has had two brushes with death throughout his life. Photo: @gadiya_sayyam/Twitter

The Ambani family faced a bomb threat this year, but the Adani Group founder ‘saw death at … just 15 feet’ when terrorists attacked the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel

Adani and a companion were also once kidnapped by gangsters upon leaving the Karnavati Club, with his family reportedly paying US$2 million for his release

Most people – if we’re lucky – can get through life without facing any brushes with death. But the world’s billionaires are not “most people”. Besides that infamous Ambani bomb threat earlier this year, Gautam Adani, the second-richest man in Asia, has already experienced two life-threatening situations in the past: a kidnapping for ransom and a terrorist attack at a luxury hotel.

So what happened exactly, and how did the 58-year-old tycoon overcome the trauma of these potentially fatal incidents?

A kidnapping for ransom

Gautam Adani is Asia’s second-richest man. Photo: @gautam.adani/Instagram

In 1998, well before he was recognised as the second-richest man in Asia, Adani caught the attention of two gangsters – Fazl-ur-Rehman and Bhogilal Darji – who wanted to extort him for money. This was a decade after he founded the Adani Group in 1988, which was then a commodity trading venture with Adani Exports (now Adani Enterprises) at the forefront.

According to ET Now News, Adani and his companion Shantilal Patel were allegedly stopped at gunpoint in a car as they were leaving the Karnavati Club in Ahmedabad, India. A scooter forced the car to stop and a group of men then abducted Adani and Patel in a van.

Released for US$2 million

Gautam Adani. Photo: @gautam_adani/Twitter

While the charge sheet did not reveal where Adani and Patel were taken nor what happened to them during the hours that they disappeared, we do know that they were eventually set free. But their freedom came at a high price, as the kidnappers were allegedly able to extort roughly US$2 million from Adani’s family before he was let go, according to The Indian Express.

Adani dislikes speaking about the incident, but told London’s Financial Times that “two or three very unfortunate incidents happened in my life, that is one of them”.

A hostage of the 2008 Mumbai attacks