The Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) on Sunday arrested three people for allegedly blackmailing and trying to extort Rs 1.5 lakh from a government employee in Patiala’s Nabha town. A spokesperson for the Vigilance Bureau said, “The three suspects — property agent Umardeen, a private individual Saleem, and the reporter of a private news channel, Rupinder Kumar alias Dimple — were arrested on the complaint of Nabha tehsil registry clerk Rupinder Singh.” All the accused are residents of Nabha. According to the bureau, the complainant had alleged that Umardeen and his accomplices had been blackmailing him for coughing up Rs 5 lakh by threatening him with a video in which he is seen taking Rs 500, which the accused claimed was a bribe. The accused allegedly threatened to leak the video online and send it to the Vigilance Bureau if Rupinder did not pay up. The complainant added that he had not received any bribe from the accused and was merely taking back Rs 500 which he had earlier given to a person. The accused shot a video of the money changing hands on a mobile phone with the intent of extorting money. The complainant further alleged that one of the accused, Umardeen, had already taken Rs 50,000 as extortion money from him, with a deal being struck for a total payment of Rs 3 lakh being made to the accused. After probing the complaint, a Vigilance team from the Punjab flying squad laid a trap and Umardeen was nabbed red-handed while accepting Rs 1.5 lakh from the complainant as second installment of the bribe. The VB team later also recovered Rs 40,000 of the Rs 50,000 which had been earlier paid by Rupinder to Umardeen. Later, after interrogation of Umardeen, his aides Saleem and Dimple were nabbed from Nabha. A case has been registered at VB police station, flying squad-1 at Mohali under sections 419, 420, 384 and 120B of IPC, and section 8 of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
