The Anti-Extortion Cell (AEC) of the Mumbai crime branch arrested a man and a woman for allegedly blackmailing and extorting Rs47 lakh over a period of 10 months from a city banker.
He gave his phone to a woman in need of making a call and landed in an extortion trap.
The Anti-Extortion Cell (AEC) of the Mumbai crime branch arrested a man and a woman for allegedly blackmailing and extorting Rs47 lakh over a period of 10 months from a city banker.
According to AEC officers, the accused — Vicky Garg (35) and Shilpa Jadhav (25) — were arrested on Friday when they came to accept another instalment of the money they had demanded from the complainant. The police said the accused were living together in Vasai and claimed to be married. The complainant is an auditor in a nationalised bank in South Mumbai.
Last February, Shilpa had approached him to borrow his cell phone for making a distress call. The complainant had allowed her to use his phone. She had later called him up and struck a friendship with him.
"Shilpa and the complainant kept in touch and also met a couple of times. Shortly after, Vicky approached the complainant and threatened him that he would expose his illicit relationship with Shilpa and defame him if he didn't pay him. Soon, he started extorting big amounts from the complainant," said deputy commissioner of police (detection) Dhananjay Kulkarni.
"In April, the accused came up with a new idea to extort more money; they told the complainant that Shilpa had become pregnant and threatened to defame him again if he did not pay. Then in May, they told the complainant that they have filed a police complaint against him and the cops are looking for him."
The police said over 10 months the two kept cooking up stories to extort money from the victim. Kulkarni said, "He was scared and believed all their stories. Fearing arrest, he fled to Rajasthan in December. It was his family member who convinced him to return to Mumbai and approach the police."
He then registered a complaint with the Mumbai crime branch earlier this month. AEC officers, after taking over the case, laid a trap to nab the accused. "We told the complainant to call them to take the next instalment of the extortion money at Metro junction. When they showed up, we moved in and arrested them," said Kulkarni.
The two are remanded in police custody till January 11 and the police are investigating whether they have extorted more people using this modus operandi.
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