Tags:
Journalism of Courage
May 5: Luck finally deserted four jobless youths who had found extortion just a phone call’s worth of effort yet very lucrative.
Ulhas Manohar alias Kulkarni alias Mayekar and three others were trapped on April 19 at a public telephone booth as they called up a Dadar-based garments exporter demanding Rs 5 lakh in the name of gangster Sada Pawle.
Crime branch senior inspector Gopal Tejale said the businessman had complained to the police that he had been receiving a series of threatening calls for money. Officers then kept a tab on the calls and found that they were being made from the Dadar-Parel area. All the telephone booths were then kept under watch.
For three days nothing happened. Finally, on April 19, Manohar called up the businessman again to deliver fresh threats when the police pounced upon him. His interrogation led to three others all Gujaratis, all unemployed, and all of whom had no links to either Sada Pawle or the underworld.
Tejale said they used to pick out numbers at random from the telephone directory and call up their targets. They made calls at regular intervals to keep the pressure on, the senior inspector said.
"These people would sometimes demanded Rs 5 lakh and finally settle for a mere Rs 25,000. They stayed in guest houses and were addicted to liquor, women and gambling," Tejale said.
The four men had also been arrested in 1991 by the Santacruz police for trying to cheat a businessman posing as income-tax officers.
