Three freed of threatening man to make public an obscene video

A Delhi court has acquitted three persons accused of threatening a man to make public his alleged obscene video as he had failed to give them Rs 20 lakh, saying the "prosecution version cannot be believed".
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sonu Agnihotri observed that police has failed to show that the cassettes given by the complainant containing voice of the accused were not tampered with and his photographs not morphed.
The three persons were acquitted of charges under sections 292 (sale of obscene books, etc), 387 (putting person in fear of death or of grievous hurt, in order to commit extortion), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC.

According to police, the complainant, a designer, used to go to a club in South Delhi's Sidharth Enclave for exercise and massage. One of the three accused was an instructor in the club who had given massage to the complainant several times before the club was shut down.
In February 2002, the instructor called up the complainant on the pretext that he had opened his own club in Mehrauli and asked him to come there, it said. The instructor, however, took the man to a house in Pushp Vihar and gave him tea, after which he fell almost unconscious.
The man told the police that the instructor took him to a room and gave him a massage for which he paid him Rs 200 and returned home. After a few days, he got a threatening call from a person claiming that he had a video of his massage and if he did not pay Rs 20 lakh, the film will be circulated in public, the complainant said.

The man said he negotiated with the caller and reluctantly agreed to pay Rs 15 lakh while also recording these phone calls. When the complainant made full payment, the accused gave him a CD and a threatening letter which he handed over to the police along with the three cassettes.

During the trial, the three men claimed that they were innocent and were falsely implicated.
The court, in its judgement, said though FSL report of the three audio cassettes and voice sample of the accused were on record, they have not been proved on record by the prosecution and cannot be taken into account.

"On phone, voice of a person sounds a bit different than actual voice and it was necessary to corroborate with regard to involvement of accused... That recordings in the cassettes would have got matched with sample voice of the accused... taken in accordance with law.
"Hence, prosecution version with regard to the threat given by accused to complainant cannot be believed," it said.