Pair Held in Man’s Kidnaping : Crime: Abductors put victim in trunk of a car and drive him to Modesto in apparent attempt to collect money for a jeweler.

A convenience store owner was abducted from his apartment while taking a shower, tied up and driven in the back of his car to Modesto, police said Wednesday.

Once there, his abductors ordered him into a relative’s house to get $100,000 in cash, police said.

But once inside the home, Ashok Kumar telephoned police, who surrounded the house and arrested the two suspects, ending an ordeal that began Monday afternoon, Modesto authorities said.

The suspects were identified as Amit Sethi, 26, and Raju Narula, 26, both of Van Nuys. They apparently were trying to get the money for a jeweler in Denver who may have received bad checks written by Ashok Kumar’s younger brother, Narinder Kumar, 29, in exchange for jewelry, Modesto police said.

Narinder Kumar, a citizen of India, owned a jewelry store in Modesto before immigration authorities deported him earlier this month for writing thousands of dollars’ worth of bad checks, police said. Investigators suspect the unidentified jeweler in Denver received some of those checks in exchange for jewelry in Narinder Kumar’s store.

On Wednesday, Ashok Kumar, 34, a thin man who bore bruises on his wrists and side from his abductors, recalled how two men pointed a gun in his face, waved a hot iron near his cheek and held scissors by his neck before driving north with him.

“They said: ‘I need the money.’ (They said if) I don’t get the money, I’ll be dead,” Ashok Kumar said.

Kumar, who said he splits his time between a Pomona home and a Garden Grove apartment, said he was not connected with his brother’s jewelry store in Modesto and did not know why he was abducted.

He said he was only trying to buy time when he told his abductors that by driving more than 300 miles north to Modesto they might be able to find his brother’s wife and get the money from her.

The store owner said after driving back to Southern California that he fears there may be people out to kill him.

“I need protection, but where do I go?” he asked.

“I never know--a customer may come in here and bam!” he said, pointing his finger like a gun. Investigators said, however, that they do not think there are any more suspects in connection with the abduction.

Police and Kumar said he does not have access to such a large amount of cash.

There is no apparent connection between the alleged abductors and Kumar, police said.

Kumar said on Wednesday that he did not know the men who abducted him, but he recognized one of the suspects as a customer who came into his Harbor Boulevard convenience store about a week before the abduction.

Police said they believe the suspects were friends of the unidentified jeweler in Denver, and they do not think the suspects were paid.

Investigators said they are still looking into several possible motives for the abduction, among them a connection to a 1987 arson involving a jewelry business operated by the Kumars in Los Angeles County. Ashok and Narinder Kumar were convicted of arson in 1988, according to the state Department of Corrections in Sacramento.

Both men were sentenced in Los Angeles Superior Court to state prison, from which they were paroled in 1990, according to state records.

“It sure is a possibility” that the arson and abduction are connected, said Modesto Police Sgt. Lee Gruetzmacher. But the two abduction suspects were not cooperating with police during interviews so “right now we can’t go by what suspects are telling us and the victim (Ashok Kumar) sure is not telling us that.”

Gruetzmacher emphasized that, based on preliminary information, “I don’t think (the abduction) had anything to do with arson. . . . It probably had more to do with the brother writing thousands of bad checks than the fire.”

Police said Sethi and Narula were booked into the Stanislaus County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail each on charges of kidnaping for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Garden Grove investigators were planning to bring both suspects to Orange County today.