2 held for blackmailing businessmen with morphed pics of wives

Officers of the city crime branch on Thursday arrested two people who would visit the homes of businessmen on the pretext of a competition, take photographs of the women at home and morph them with naked photographs of other women.

The photographs would then be sent to the residence of the victims via post and money would be demanded for not making these photographs public.

On receipt of specific information, a trap was laid outside Sion station by inspectors Sanjay Satardekar, Sagar Shivalkar and their team on Thursday. Deepak Narayan Dandekar, 49, a resident of Panvel and Krishnaji Shankar Mhatre, 42, a resident of Pen, were nabbed. The duo claimed to have extorted money from families in Uran, Amravati and Mumbai, the police said.

Around the time of Ganesh Chaturti, Dandekar would visit the homes along with a photographer. “He told the victims that there was a local competition for the best designed Ganpati shrine, for which they required photographs. Meanwhile, the photographer, who was unaware of the con, would take photographs of the housewives,” said a crime branch officer.

Dandekar would then buy nude photographs of other women, morph them with his photographs and mail them to the victims to extort money. According to the police, the latest victim of their con runs a fishing trawler business in Mumbai and is a resident of Uran.

“We had received specific information that this victim was duped in a similar fashion and began our investigations. The victim had not given money to these two, so Dandekar and Mhatre pasted more than a dozen photographs of his wife at a public urinal and bus stand in Lonavala and Uran. They also gave the address of these locations, which were later visited by the victim,” said the officer.