Jayesh Jain, a 25-year-old a BCom graduate from Jai Hind College, works for Pooja Glass Beads, a small proprietorship firm based in Mumbai's Zaveri Bazaar that imports beads and stones from China for sale in India.

He is in the firm's marketing and sales division and on March 12 made his third trip in ten months to Yiwu, a tiny urban centre three hours away from Shanghai and described on its website as the 'supermarket of the world for small commodities' in Zhejiang province. He had gone to purchase beads and artificial stones but had no inkling of what lay in store.

Overnight, on March 13, he found himself forcibly taken by 10-15 people from the market place to an undisclosed location. His passport was taken away and he was accused by Lisa, a Chinese woman who runs a company called HR International, of being a part of an Indian firm that owed her and several Chinese traders 2 million RMB. That was two Saturdays ago.