By Tan Sin Chow

GEORGE TOWN, MALAYSIA: A factory manager claimed that he was held captive for more than 10 days in five hotels by a loan shark for failing to settle a RM400,000 (S$163,000) debt.

His ordeal ended on Tuesday after police 'rescued' him from a hotel in Penang Road here.

Police have since arrested a loan shark in his 30s.

State police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Wira Ayub Yaakob said the victim also owed RM600,000 to six other loan sharks.

George Town OCPD Asst Comm Azam Abd Hamid said investigations showed that the factory manager and the loan shark were friends.

"There were no injuries on him when we found him. His allegation also sounds too good to be true."

"We would not hesitate to take action if he has lodged a false police report," he said.

ACP Azam said police were baffled as to how the victim could have checked into the hotels under his own name if he was abducted.

"We will check the footage of the closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in all the hotels he had stayed in to verify his claim," he said.

In an unrelated matter, police busted an illegal four-digit lottery syndicate that had raked in up to RM3.6mil bets a month.

Six people, including three women aged between 22 and 40, were arrested during the raid at a shophouse in Jalan Aston, Bukit Mertajam at 6.50pm on Wednesday.

The group were tabulating the total amount of bets they had received for the day when the police stormed in.