Sextortion mastermind arrested in Rajasthan
39-year-old man arrested in Bharatpur, Rajasthan for alleged involvement in sextortion cases. Accused is mastermind behind sextortion gang in his village. Gang used multiple mobile numbers, phones, and bank accounts to extort money. They also cut CCTV wires in ATMs to avoid detection.
Mumbai: A 39-year-old man was arrested in Bharatpur district, Rajasthan, for his alleged involvement in several extortion cases. The accused – identified as Premchand Kisan Sharma – is the mastermind behind a sextortion gang operating in his village.
According to the police, a 60-year-old man approached them in February this year and alleged that a woman, whom he had befriended on social media, made a video call on WhatsApp and asked him to remove his clothes. “She then blackmailed him to pay money. Later, a man posing as a CBI officer called and told him that the woman had committed suicide and extorted more money from him for not arresting him,” an officer from DB Marg police station said.
“He had paid in all ₹3.8 lakh to the frauds. We started the investigation and traced the accused to village Bamni in Kaman Tehsil, Bharatpur district. Several people from Bamni and other nearby villages are involved in sextortion rackets. We knew it would be quite a challenge to arrest the accused and therefore we coordinated with senior police officials in Bharatpur, seeking their assistance to trace and apprehend the accused,” the officer added.
However, the Bharatpur police advised the team not to visit Bamni village and arrest the accused, stating that either some policeman or some other resident would tip off the accused, forcing the accused to flee, and the others would attack the police team.
“We decided to wait outside the village. On the third day of our wait, he stepped out of the village, and we caught him. We immediately produced him before a local court in Kaman, took his transit remand and brought him to Mumbai,” the officer said.
The police, however, could not seize any material from Sharma as they could not visit his house. “However, we have unearthed that the accused was using at least ten mobile numbers, more than 20 phones and five bank accounts,” the officer said. “Sharma told us that his village has an ATM and a Point of Sale Machine (POS) to transfer and withdraw money. The gang used to cut the wires of CCTV inside ATMs so that people wouldn’t know who had withdrawn the money.”
The gang opened bank accounts on forged documents which they collected from various people on the promise of job opportunities, the officer added.
