Kidnaped California Man, 3 Britons Rescued in India : Terrorism: Captives faced threats of beheading by Muslim group demanding the release of 10 extremists.

The armed struggle over Kashmir reached into India’s capital Monday when a militant Muslim group announced it had kidnaped an American and three Britons here and would behead them, one after the other, unless the Indian government freed 10 of the captors’ jailed “brothers.”

“Our hostages are as yet unhurt,” claimed the little-known group, which identified itself as Al Hadid. “Whether they remain that way is the sole responsibility of the Indian government.”

But within hours of the delivery of its claim and demands to the Voice of America and British Broadcasting Corp., the American, identified as Bela Josef Nuss of the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, was found unharmed in a house near New Delhi, shackled by one of his legs to a post, police said.

Information obtained from three of Nuss’ captors led police early this morning to the hide-out where the Britons were being held, and they too were freed in an operation that cost a police inspector and a constable their lives, police said.

Nuss told police he had been kidnaped 10 days before. The raid that freed him came in the grimy industrial settlement of Ghaziabad after police spied someone leaping over a back wall from a house already linked to criminal activity.

Officers crashed into the residence and found Nuss, police said.

“Today, when I heard noises, I felt good, I knew something was happening, and then came the policemen,” the 43-year-old Nuss said.

Describing himself as a “frequent traveler,” Nuss told the Associated Press that a Kashmiri man he met in a New Delhi hotel offered to take him to a wedding. They traveled to Mussoorie, a desolate area near Ghaziabad, east of New Delhi.

But there was no wedding. “I realized something was wrong,” Nuss said. “When I told them on the third day that I want to go back to Delhi, they told me a big no.”

“I was told by the kidnapers that they were holding me and three . . . Britons as captives separately and we would be freed when their friends got released from Indian jails,” Nuss said at Ghaziabad police station.

Police said they captured one militant and injured another in a shootout with guerrillas at the hide-out in Uttar Pradesh state where Nuss was held.

Omkarnath Sharma, Ghaziabad police spokesman, said the injured militant and two men who had been helping Nuss’ kidnapers gave them the location of a house in Saharanpur, another city in Uttar Pradesh about 100 miles north of New Delhi, where the Britons were being held.

At 4 this morning, a Ghaziabad inspector and a team of constables aided by local officers surrounded the home. They knocked on the door but got no answer. When they tried to force open the door, Sharma said, there was a burst of gunfire from inside, and the inspector and a constable were mortally wounded.

The Britons were freed unharmed, Sharma said. He said he had no further details of the early morning raid.

The three Britons were identified by the BBC as Paul Ridout, Miles Croston and Rhys Partridge. Photocopies of their passports, like Nuss’, were delivered to the New Delhi bureaus of the VOA and BBC.

Although the hostage crisis was resolved, it could still prove an embarrassing setback in India’s campaign to convince its people and the world that the situation in the strife-racked state of Jammu and Kashmir has been normalized to the point where free and fair elections can be held to fill state offices.

The kidnaping of what appeared to be foreign tourists in India’s capital could also deal another blow to the country’s travel industry, still reeling from the enormous number of cancellations sparked by an earlier outbreak of plague in the western city of Surat and Bombay’s state of Maharashtra.

As confirmation of the high stakes involved in Monday’s events, virtually the entire top brass of the New Delhi police force was said by Indian media on Monday night to be discussing strategies to deal with a genuine “crisis.”

In its letter delivered to the VOA office by post office courier Monday afternoon, Al Hadid included two Polaroid snapshots of the captives, who it said were recently abducted in New Delhi and were in confinement “somewhere in India.”

The Westerners were shown held at gunpoint by hooded captors, and a copy of an Indian newspaper dated Oct. 26 was prominently displayed in one photo.

“Unless our brothers are released, the guests of the Indian government will be beheaded one at a time,” the letter warned. “Since the Indian government clearly understands the situation, it will bear full responsibility.”

It gave 10 names of people it demanded be freed, at least half of whom are arrested members of the various militant organizations fighting to end India’s rule in Kashmir.

One, Sajjad Afghani, is believed to belong to the Harkat ul Ansar group responsible for kidnaping two British trekkers in the disputed north Indian state this summer.

Those two Britons, a 17-year-old student and a 36-year-old video director, were released unharmed June 24 after 17 days in captivity. Like the latest kidnap victims, the hikers were grabbed to blackmail Indian authorities into releasing Kashmiri separatists.