2 held in Andhra Pradesh for blackmailing, extortion

Tadepalligudem Police have arrested two persons for allegedly extorting money by blackmailing people using their sexually explicit videos.

The matter came to light after one of the victims, who hails from Palakollu town, lodged a complaint at a police station in Tadepalligudem town earlier this week, alleging that the accused were blackmailing him with his videos which were recorded on Facebook chat, Tadepalligudem Police Inspector Akula Raghu said.

"A person from Palakollu town lodged a complaint at our police station on February 18. In his complaint, the man said that a person with a fake Facebook account of a woman had befriended him, chatted with him, and later recorded his videos on FB chat, after which he started extorting money from him by blackmailing him," Raghu said.

Raghu said that the victim had already given Rs 5.75 lakhs to the accused in several installments. The man lodged a complaint after he was further demanded Rs 50,000.

"After the complaint was filed, the police conducted a decoy operation, where the victim, as per our instruction, informed the cheaters that he would be sending the money through a person. We then sent a constable to give that money. After culprits came to a particular place, the police caught them," Raghu said.

During interrogation, the accused said that they were addicted to online rummy and owed huge sums of money to people.

"They then planned to open a Facebook account with a female name and made friends with people like this victim. They used to video chat in messengers, save the video recordings and then used to blackmail people," he said.