Extortion racket busted: Tutor, engineer arrested

NEW DELHI, May 12: A team from the Anti-Extortion cell led by Inspector Ishwar Singh, busted a gang extorting large sums of money from a ...

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NEW DELHI, May 12: A team from the Anti-Extortion cell led by Inspector Ishwar Singh, busted a gang extorting large sums of money from a Delhi-based businessman. One of the gang members was an extortionist.

According to officials of the crime branch, Balbir Gupta and his wife Manju, both residents of Yamuna Vihar complained to the police that they had been recieving threatening calls. They said that the caller had identified himself as Ranvir Gujjar, a member of the famous Gujjar gang, and had asked them to pay them Rs 10 lakh.

The extortionist negotiated with Gupta and agreed to settle for a sum of Rs 6 lakh instead. He then told Gupta to put the money — in bundles of Rs 500 notes — in a bag and deliver it to a physically disabled person, who sells water melons near the Dabur factory in Ghaziabad.

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According to police instructions, one of Gupta’s employees delivered the bag to the vendor. He was then followed by the police. He led them to his other two associates — Mukesh Gupta and Sanjeev Tyagi — at ISBT Anand Vihar.

Upon questioning, they found that Mukesh was employed as an Excise Inspector posted at Noida. He would give a matrimonial advertisement in the paper and as soon as some family would respond, he would get details about their background and then extort money from them.

The police said that Sanjeev Tyagi is a diploma-holder in Mechanical Engineering and Harish Kumar, who is physically disabled is a tutor by profession.