5 held for bid to extort Rs 8 cr from IPS officers in police custody

A Gandhinagar court on Tuesday remanded five persons arrested for attempting to extort Rs 8 crore from IPS officers on alleged false charges of rape, to police custody until February 17, said ATS SP Sunil Joshi.

The five accused arrested by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) are GK Prajapati who was BJP OBC cell executive committee member and suspended from the party, journalists working as stringers in Gujarati online portals Ashutosh Pandya and Kartik Jani, Surat-based middleman Haresh Jadhav and Mahendrasinh Parmar who does liaison work.

The investigation began after a 33-year-old woman’s affidavit claiming that a top police officer raped her at his residence in Chandkheda area of the city went viral on social media recently.

The ATS alleged that Prajapati, along with Jadhav and Parmar, allegedly hatched the conspiracy and convinced the woman to sign the false affidavit and took the help of journalists to circulate and publish the affidavit.