Four held for trying to extort Rs 1.5 cr from industrialist

Police have arrested four persons for allegedly attempting to extort Rs 1.5 crore from an industrialist in Northwest Delhi.

The accused,identified as Dinesh,Faishal Hassan,Manoj Kumar and Vijay Kumar,allegedly called up Sanjeev Kanwar,an industrialist,and demanded Rs 1 crore,threatening to kill him if he failed to pay,DCP (Northwest) P Karunakaran said.

“A day after the first call was made,the accused called again to enquire if the money had been arranged for. When Kanwar expressed his inability to arrange the amount,the caller threatened that that he would be killed by 3.00 pm the next day,” the DCP said.

The caller also told Kanwar that since he had delayed the payment by a day,he would have to arrange for Rs 1.5 crore,the DCP said. Kanwar was asked to deliver the amount at Karnal bypass,near Haryana border on GT Road.

Kanwar then approached police and a case was registered at Ashok Vihar police station. A team was formed to investigate the case.

“We suspected an insider’s role,so we asked the complainant to give us details of his factory and domestic employees along with those of his business associates. With the help of technical surveillance,we identified Dinesh as one of the accused. Dinesh told us that he and three others had planned to extort money from Kanwar,” police said.

Vijay,who was an ex-employee at Kanwar’s factory,had told the other three about Kanwar’s wealth. After selecting Kanwar as their target,Manoj arranged for a SIM card from Jind,Haryana to make the extortion call. Faisal was chosen to make the calls as his voice was coarse. Meanwhile,Vijay kept a watch on Kanwar’s movements.