Cops launch probe in early morning extortion at Marine Drive

The victim, Vignesh Kishan, tweeted at 2.18am on Saturday, saying that a policeman had taken the money from him. Kishan included a screenshot of a GPay transaction with his tweet, which showed that he had paid ₹2,500 to a person identified as Atish Jadhav.

Mumbai: The Marine Drive Police have initiated investigations into a tweet which states that a cop took a bribe of ₹2,500 from a man for sitting at the Marine Drive sea face in the early hours of Saturday.

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The victim, Vignesh Kishan, tweeted at 2.18am on Saturday, saying that a policeman had taken the money from him. Kishan included a screenshot of a GPay transaction with his tweet, which showed that he had paid ₹2,500 to a person identified as Atish Jadhav.

The tweet soon went viral, garnering 1,382 retweets, 6,396 likes and 8.21 lakh views by Sunday night. The Mumbai Police, too, replied in the thread, asking Kishan to share details of the incident via a direct message. The police also started their own inquiries to identify the supposed cop who had taken the bribe from Kishan.

“We have checked all our personnel records and have found no one with either that name or the mobile number at our police station. We tried calling the number but it was switched off. We are conducting technical investigations to find out more about the person using the number,” said senior police inspector Nilesh Bagul, Marine Drive police station.

The police also responded to Kishan with this information in his tweet on Sunday evening. Kishan, however, has still not responded to them, officers said.

“We have been waiting for Kishan to come and record a formal statement, as it will provide crucial leads for our probe. If nothing, we could at least identify the spot where the incident occurred so that we could check CCTV cameras for leads,” said Bagul.