Punjab Police bust extortion racket linked to gangster Lawrence Bishnoi
Darpan News Desk IANS, 31 May, 2023 12:59 PM
Chandigarh, May 31 (IANS) Punjab Police have busted an extortion racket, backed by gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, with the arrest of its three operatives, said Director General of Police (DGP) Punjab Gaurav Yadav here on Wednesday.
Those arrested have been identified as Rohit Bharadwaj of Zirkapur and Mohit Bharadwaj and Arjun Thakur, both of Chandigarh.
DGP Yadav said following a detailed investigation and intelligence-gathering in this case, the State Special Operation Cell of Mohali had initiated coordinated action which led to the arrest of these three persons found involved in operating an extortion racket.
Police have also recovered cash amounting to Rs 14.78 lakh from the possession of Rohit Bhardwaj and other incriminating evidence from the mobile phones recovered from accused persons.
Divulging details about modus-operandi, the DGP said the arrested persons were using online gambling platform 'Diamond Exchange' to lure victims by convincing them to join online gaming and betting on a nominal fee to gain great profits.
"After winning some rewards, the victim would start to lose money in betting and then accused persons would offer money on credit starting from lakhs," he said, adding once the victim avail the credit, the accused used to charge hefty interest on the amount, which could sometimes accumulated to crores of rupees.
DGP Yadav said when the victim showed unwillingness to return the money, the offenders would make threatening calls to them through their gangster associates sitting in jails and abroad.
During investigation, the police verified various payment gateways and the bank accounts to which the money was transferred, he said, adding proceedings to freeze the bank accounts linked to the activities of the accused have been initiated.
Investigations are on to identify the owner of the fraudulent website and location from where they are operating them, he added.
Shankar Mishra, who is accused of urinating on an elderly female co-passenger in a drunken state on a New York-New Delhi Air India flight in November last year, told a Delhi court on Wednesday through his lawyer that 'unzipping' his pants was not for the purpose of 'sexual desire', and hence he cannot be considered as a 'lustful' man.
On January 6, Poonawala moved an application in the court seeking release of his debit and credit cards, citing need for funds to purchase day-to-day items, as well as warm clothes. Shukla had extended his judicial custody for four more days and ordered to physically produce him in the court on January 10.
Next day after all the parcels were counted, they realised that from a total 719 parcels, 667 parcels were intact. The robbers had stolen items from 52 parcels, like laptops, tablets, 259 mobile phones, headphones, wrist watches and print rolls worth Rs one crore.
Assuming the charge of Health and Family Welfare Minister here, Balbir Singh, the legislator from Patiala (Rural) who won the 2022 Assembly election by a whopping margin of over 50,000 votes, told the media that health and education are the areas of core concern of the government.
After welcoming a large gathering of NRIs, who have arrived here from several countries to participate in the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, PM Modi said that every Indian-origin person living in foreign countries 'is brand ambassador of India'.
Besides heroin, the IGP said the police have recovered 407 kg opium, 407 kg ganja, 233 quintals of poppy husk, and 33.88 lakh tablets, capsules, injections and vials of pharma opioids. The police have also recovered Rs 7.72 crore of drug money from the possession of drug smugglers.
