Charitable trust owner, 5 others arrested by Mumbai Police for extorting BMC engineer of Rs 55 lakh

A crime branch officer said on July 27, the engineer received a call from a person who claimed to be from Abhinav Charitable trust. He told the engineer that they found his educational degrees fake and called him to their office. They demanded Rs 55 lakhs from him to settle the matter.

The engineer told them his degrees were genuine and that he contacted an intermediary, who in turn contacted two others he knew at the charitable trust to find out why the engineer was being harassed, said a police officer.

“These two people, whom the intermediary contacted, also started demanding money from the victim. They scared him saying two people were plotting his murder over some action he had taken against them. They demanded Rs 2 lakhs from the engineer for his safety,” said the police adding that the victim heeded to their demand.

However, a few days later, two others contacted the engineer again and demanded Rs 3 lakh more. When the complainant said he had made the payment, they told him the payment has been made to others, not them. Realising that they would continue extorting money from him, he approached police last week.

The anti-extortion cell of the Mumbai crime branch asked him to continue talking to them and agree to pay. The victim recorded the conversation where the accused demanding Rs 3 lakhs. He called them in Goregaon on Monday.

A police team lay waiting as the victim took Rs 3 lakhs to give the accused in dummy notes. As soon as the accused accepted the money, they were caught red-handed by the police team.

An FIR was registered at the Goregaon police station following which the accused were produced before a court on Tuesday, which sent them to police custody till September 27.

The accused have been identified as Pratap Chokandars alias Babloo (49), Abhayraj Patel (48), Santosh Poojari (45), Shekar Sakpal (33), Ashiva Pandey (33) and Rafique Mulani (42).