Gangsters posing as cops extort over Rs 1 Cr from dozen victims
Darpan News Desk IANS, 06 Dec, 2021 01:29 PM
New Delhi, Dec 6 (IANS) The Delhi Police crime branch have busted a 'sextortion' racket in the national capital, which duped dozens of people and extorted more than Rs one crore from them.
Police officials said that the gang of six members, including two women, began its activities just before the first lockdown in 2020. The main member, the kingpin of the racket, identified as Neeraj of Haryana's Bahadurgarh, was apprehended by the police near PVR Cinema, Sector-14, Prashant Vihar, Rohini.
"The accused used to create a Facebook profile in the name of a girl and sent 'friend requests' to their targets. After confirmation of the request, they chatted with their victims, through Facebook messenger, pretending to be a girl. Once they obtained the mobile phone number of the victim they sent obscene content to lure him," police said, adding that after this the female-member of the gang made a video call to further entice the victim.
The gang used to extract complete details from the target to assess his paying capacity. Once they were convinced about the financial background of the target, the female-member of the gang would invite the victim to a pre-decided place and indulge in a sexual activity. Now hooked, when the victim arrived for the second rendezvous, the other members of the gang barged into the room posing as policemen," the official informed.
The victim was led to believe that the police has raided the place. The gang members then posing as 'policemen' threatened the victim of exposure and extorted money from him. This way the gang committed sextortion from more than a dozen victims in the past one and a half years. They have extorted Rs 5 - 10 lakh from each victim, based on his paying capacity, the police said.
Additional Commissioner of Police, Dheeraj Kumar, said that efforts were being made to trace other victims and to arrest the remaining gang members. "Concerned police station has been informed accordingly. Further investigation is in progress," he said.
The food claimed the lives of three of her family members including the father, younger sister and elder brother last week. The police said that the 15-year-old girl had mixed weedicides into food to 'punish' her brother and mother who used to rebuke and scold her over household chores.
The deceased, a resident of Nachinola village in North Goa, was missing since Wednesday morning and a missing complaint was filed by her father with a local police station.
The area has been cordoned off and additional forces have reached the spot. Police said the terrorists involved in firing have been trapped and an operation has been started by the police and security forces.
Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Pralhad Joshi, Anurag Thakur, Bhupender Yadav, V. Muraleedharan and Arjun Ram Meghwal held a joint press conference at the Shastri Bhavan here on Thursday and condemned the 'unruly' and 'violent' behaviour of the opposition parties led by the Congress.
Chief Ministers of Congress-ruled states as well as where the party is in power as part of an alliance, including Tamil Nadu's M.K. Stalin (DMK), Maharashtra's Uddhav Thackeray (Shiv Sena) and Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren (JMM) will also be invited.
Besides, the All India Congress Committee, the Maharashtra and Mumbai verified Congress handles, that of Congress Legislative Party leader and Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat, Mumbai Congress President Bhai Jagtap, state party social media head Abhijeet Sapkal, and around 500 other leaders at various level have been blocked on Twitter.
