By Chuah Bee Kim

JOHOR BARU - State police have arrested eight more people, including a woman, over the past seven days in connection with the kidnapping of a 55-year-old housewife in Muar on June 22.

With the arrests, police believe all members of the gang have been rounded up.

Six gang members, including a Vietnamese woman, were arrested the day the housewife's family paid the RM650,000 ransom, a few days after the kidnapping. Police recovered RM556,976 of the ransom from the six.

State police chief Datuk Mokhtar Shariff said police recovered RM46,500 from the eight who were arrested.

The money was believed to be part of the ransom, he said, adding that eight handphones and a car were also seized.

He said police had yet to ascertain the role of the Vietnamese woman in the kidnapping, and were still investigating her relationship with the other members of the gang.

The victim, the wife of a factory owner, was kidnapped outside her house in Serom 8, Sungai Mati, in Ledang, Muar, at 6.30pm. -The New Straits Times