Ghaziabad: Five of porn racket arrested

The Ghaziabad police on Friday arrested a couple and their three women employees for allegedly running an online porn racket in which they trapped customers by recording their objectionable videos and extorted lakhs of rupees by threatening them to make the videos viral on social media

The Ghaziabad police on Friday arrested a couple and their three women employees for allegedly running an online porn racket in which they trapped customers by recording their objectionable videos and extorted lakhs of rupees by threatening them to make the videos viral on social media.

The suspects in Ghaziabad police custody on Friday. (Sakib Ali/HT)

Several accounts of the suspect couple have transactions amounting to about ₹3.6 crore, the police said, adding the suspects were operating from a rented flat in a high-rise in Raj Nagar Extension.

Police identified the couple as Yogesh Gautam, 28, his wife Sapna Gautam, 24. The couple’s three women employees, who joined lately, were identified as Nikita Singh, 19, Priya, 20, and Nidhi Khanna, 28, all residents of Ghaziabad.

According to the police, for past two years, the couple was registered on a website where they would connect on live porn video shows with different customers.

“Through this website, the customers used to pay up ₹234 per minute and the couple used to get half of the money. Later, the couple came in contact with a man from Australia who told them that they can start their own venture by connecting to customers directly and bypassing the website. So, they started connecting to customers directly by providing them the mobile numbers,” said Nipun Agarwal, superintendent of police (city 1).

The police said that when the customer base grew, the couple hired three women and together they propagated the modus operandi of the website.

“While dealing directly with the customers, the gang would record their objectionable videos and then blackmail them. We have come across the couple’s eight bank accounts so far and four of these have transactions of about ₹3.6 crore. Recently, we got a tip-off from the Rajkot police in Gujarat that the suspects extorted ₹80 lakh from a man through a similar modus operandi and the money belonged to his employer. The employer later lodged an FIR and the reason behind siphoning off ₹80 lakh was revealed to the police,” Agarwal said.

Based on the tip provided by the Rajkot police, the Ghaziabad police roped in cyber cell teams and nabbed the suspects, the officials said.

“The couple had hired a high-end flat in Raj Nagar Extension and was living a luxurious life. It is estimated that they cheated hundreds of people and we are trying to trace them with the help of bank transactions of the suspects. We also recovered several mobile phones containing objectionable videos, web cameras, laptops, and bank documents, among other things, from their possession,” the police officer said.

According to the police, an FIR was registered against the suspects at Nandgram police station under IPC sections for extortion, obscenity, criminal breach of trust, cheating and also under provisions of the Information Technology Act.