4 men arrested for demanding Rs 1.80-crore extortion from civic engineer

Four men, including the driver of a civic body engineer, were arrested for allegedly trying to extort Rs 1.80 crore from him, the police said today.

The accused, identified as Sachin Singh (19), Sonu (22), Sehdev (23), Mukesh (27), are all residents of Lalkuan in Delhi and were arrested from Faridabad.

They allegedly posed as members of the Kranti gang and demanded extortion, the police said.

The Kranti gang's suspected kingpin Rajesh Bharti, along with three others, was shot dead in an encounter with the Delhi Police's Special Cell in south Delhi's Chhatarpur on June 9.

In order to avoid being detected, the accused used to call using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and texting apps.

A complaint was filed by the engineer on June 13 alleging that he had received several threat calls for extortion from United States and Canada mobile numbers.

The accused even made an attempt to kidnap the victim's son while he was returning home from Faridabad on June 13 and a complaint was filed at Surajkund police station.

They threatened the victim that if he didn't pay extortion money, they will eliminate his family, said Romil Baaniya, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South).

The police team laid a trap at Badkhal Chowk in Faridabad where the accused persons had asked the victim to deliver the extortion money on June 28.

Later, the accused changed their spot of delivery and asked the complainant to deliver the extortion money on the road approaching NH-2 near flyover.

Two men on a motorcycle approached the car of the victim. One of them knocked on the car's window and after taking the ransom bag at gunpoint, they tried to flee on the motorcycle but the police team intercepted the motorcycle, said the DCP.

Subsequently, the others were also nabbed.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that they all belonged to poor families so they hatched a conspiracy to kidnap a boy for ransom. One of the accused, Sehdev, was the complainant's driver. He had told Singh that the MCD engineer owns a farmhouse in Faridabad and would be able to pay the ransom amount, he added.

Singh hatched a conspiracy to kidnap the engineer's son, the senior officer added.

Singh, a class 12 pass-out, wanted to use the ransom money to get admission in college. He is quite tech savvy and is a keen learner of cyber techniques. He had political aspirations as well, the DCP said.

The accused said that they just wanted to instill fear so they threatened the victim's son. They even used names of gangsters such as Rajesh Bharti to threaten the victim.

A firearm with live cartridges, five mobile phones and one motorcycle used in the crime were recovered.