Extortion bid: two in police net

The Park Site police on Tuesday arrested two men for allegedly posing as journalists and trying to extort money from Sandeep Kishore Dani,a Mulund-based packaged water company owner. The accused had allegedly threatened Dani that they would expose the water company’s ‘substandard packaged water’,said police.

On February 26,Dani received a call from Sudhakar Dhamdhade who claimed that the bottled water that Dani’s firm manufactures has germs. “Soon,Dani sent his lab assistant and staff to verify contamination but they found that the vessel used to store the water was dirty. The matter was resolved there but one of the accused Ashok Harname who assists Dani in his business had seen the whole incident. He then allegedly conspired against Dani with two other accused,Manoj Sonkar and Suryaprakash Dube,” said a police officer.

Sonkar and Dube posed as reporters and threatened Dani that they would ‘expose’ him unless he paid them Rs 1 lakh. A deal had been struck for Rs 30,000 and the duo called Dani to a location in Ghatkopar. However,the police nabbed them and they led the police team to Harname’s house.

“We have recovered the ID card of a ‘Hindi daily News Express’ from Sonkar and an India News visiting card from Dube. However,we need to verify if there are any media houses in these names,” said the official.