Versova kidnapping: three more arrested from Nalasopara

The six-member gang has so far targeted over 20 people in the last few months in a similar manner and extorted money from them. The police are trying to find out who the victims are and who had paid through G-Pay and RTGS.

Mumbai: The Mumbai crime branch on Tuesday arrested three more accused in connection with the alleged kidnapping and extortion of a 26-year-old shop owner from Andheri. The police are on the lookout for the remaining two members of the six-member gang who are posing as policemen from the narcotics department and extorting by threatening people to implicate them in a drug case.

the crime branch arrested Deepak Jadhav, 36, the mastermind of the gang. (HT Photo)

The trio arrested are Dilip Dagadu Manjulkar, 46, from Washim, Rushtam Mustafa Shah, 32, from Malad, and Sachin Vijay Malhotra, 35, from Goregaon.

Police officials said the accused will be produced before the court for remand on Wednesday.

On Monday, Unit 9 of the crime branch arrested Deepak Jadhav, 36 – the mastermind of the gang who, along with five others on July 30, allegedly kidnapped the Andheri resident, posing as policemen from the narcotics department, from a bar and restaurant in Versova and demanded a sum of ₹50 lakh by threatening to implicate him in a drugs case. The gang members later coerced the complainant to transfer a sum of ₹5.3 lakh through G-Pay and RTGS transactions to their bank accounts.

The victim transferred a sum of ₹3 lakh from G-pay and ₹2.3 lakh from RTGS transition, a total of ₹5.3 lakh in their bank accounts. When the accused threatened his family members, he issued them a cheque of ₹7 lakh. The cheque, however, was not presented for encashment.

The victim approached unit 9, and a case was registered in the Versova police station on July 9. Police inspector Daya Nayak and his team checked CCTV footage of the spots and arrested Jadhav.

The accused dress like policemen in plain clothes and wear brown shoes, keep their hair trimmed, and mostly wear khaki trousers.

They keep an eye on the Nigerian nationals who supply drugs in the city, and once they find people buying drugs from them, they target the drug consumers by asking them to accompany them for medical tests to initiate legal action against them.

During interrogation, Jadhav, a history-sheeter, claimed that he left his job as a sub-inspector in the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) a few years ago and was arrested in a 2019 robbery case at a gold firm in Pune. He along with others, had allegedly robbed 12 kilograms of gold worth ₹4.2 crore.

After coming out on bail, Jahdav and his two associates, Pankaj Pal, and Santosh Singh, in June 2022, posed as officials of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and allegedly kidnapped a 35-year-old assistant film director and extorted ₹1 lakh from him by threatening to implicate him in a drugs case.

The six-member gang has so far targeted over 20 people in the last few months in a similar manner and extorted money from them. We have been trying to find out who the victims are and who had paid through G-Pay and RTGS, police said.