The two kidnappers saw little threat when their victim’s sister-in-law approached their vehicle, fumbling with her handbag.
But what Ayisha Falaq finally produced from the bag was a pistol. Even worse for the kidnappers, the mother of two is a national-grade markswoman.
“I just took my gun and shot them,” says Falaq, 32, who lives in Delhi. “I shot one in his leg, the other in the waist.”
She is being celebrated this week for her courage in helping to stop her brother-in-law’s kidnapping and for incapacitating the men, who were arrested soon after by police.
Falaq’s brother-in-law, Asif, was driving a taxi in northern Delhi on Thursday evening when two customers demanded he hand over his wallet.
Finding only 150 rupees, they beat Asif, a student at Delhi University, then forced him to call his family. “Your brother is with us,” Falaq says the men told them over the phone. “Give us 25,000 rupees, otherwise we will kill him.”
The family called the police and together they took their places at the location where the kidnappers wanted to collect the money.
“We called [one of the kidnappers] and told him we had reached the place, please come and take your money and free our brother,” Falaq says.
Suspecting the police had been contacted, the kidnappers abruptly changed the meeting spot. This time, with the police hanging back, Falaq and her family managed to pull up behind the men’s vehicle.
“I came out and showed them the money. I said they could take it, my brother was more precious,” she says.
The suspicious kidnappers tried to flee. But Falaq’s family were ready, she says, using another car to block their escape from the front.
Trapped, “the kidnappers got scared”, Falaq says. “They started screaming to shoot my brother, saying we had cheated them.”
Falaq, who won a bronze medal at a national shooting championship in 2015, says she then saw one of the men begin to load his gun. “I was already outside of my car. I started to take my pistol out of my purse.
“I just wanted to scare them, to show them I had a gun,” she adds. “But when they started shooting at me, I had to shoot back.”
She hit both men, who sustained non-fatal injuries, and although they tried to escape on foot, the police caught up with them quickly.
“I normally shoot targets,” she says. “This time I had to shoot people. But I wasn’t scared. I teach shooting classes and I’m a shooting coach too.”
Asif managed to escape unharmed. “He’s absolutely fine, he’s not injured, the medical tests are all right,” Falaq says.
She was afraid when police seized her gun and vehicle for forensic testing, but after the Indian media picked up her story, she says “everybody is supporting me”.
“The kidnappers maybe didn’t think I could shoot – they were worried about my husband or another man,” she adds.
Falaq took up shooting in 2011, after the birth of her second child, at the encouragement of her husband, also a competitive marksman. “He supported me, he helped me, he coached me, so credit should also go to him,” she says.
