Ghaziabad: 21-year-old arrested for extorting jewellery from minor girl after blackmailing her

According to police, Meena became friendly with the girl online about eight months ago and extorted gold and silver jewellery worth ₹8 lakh and about ₹40,000 cash from the girl

A 21-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly extorting jewellery items worth ₹8 lakh and ₹40,000 cash from a 15-year-old girl, whom he met online, after threatening to make public some of her private photos, senior police officers said.

Police identified the suspect as Tarun Meena, a resident of Shalimar Garden Extension 1, and said he is a college graduate who is currently jobless. (HT Photo)

Police said an FIR in this connection was registered on Tuesday on a complaint given by the girl’s father at Shalimar Garden police station, under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita section 308(5) (extortion by putting any person in fear of death or of grievous hurt).

Police identified the suspect as Tarun Meena, a resident of Shalimar Garden Extension 1, and said he is a college graduate who is currently jobless.

The police said that family of the victim girl resides in Bhopra and her father found out on August 19 that jewellery items kept in the house were missing.

“When I asked my daughter about the missing items, she told me that she got friendly with a boy on Instagram and that he some of her objectionable photos with him. He threatened to make them public unless she brought him the jewellery items from our home,” the man said in his complaint.

Police said several police teams were formed to investigate the case and they zeroed in on the suspect, Tarun Meena, from Shalimar Garden.

According to police, Meena became friendly with the girl online about eight months ago and extorted gold and silver jewellery worth ₹8 lakh and about ₹40,000 cash from the girl.

“He would come to meet the girl in a Honda City car (belonging to his friend) in order to impress her. They met near DLF Colony and also went out on outings a couple of times. The suspect took the jewellery from her and sold them to a jeweller in Sundar Nagri, Delhi. This money he spent on funding his outstation trips and parties. The girl had exchanged a few of her private photos with him and he further morphed her face with other obscene images and threatened to make them public,” said a police officer attached to case investigation, asking not to be named.

“Police teams worked on electronic surveillance to nab the suspect. We came to know that he has two more girlfriends and we are investigating whether he extorted anything valuable from them as well. When our teams reached out to the jeweller in Delhi, he showed us the bills of payments made to the suspect. The suspect sold two bangles (which he extorted from the girl) worth about ₹2.75 lakh to the jeweller in July, and the payment was pending. The jeweller has paid that amount to the police,” said Siddharth Gautam, assistant commissioner of police, Shalimar Garden.

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