House help extorts employer, arrested

The accused, Sachin Namuna Gupta, 22, who originally hails from Jharkhand’s Mahugaon, was working for past three years as a house maid with the complainant, a 41-year-old medical professional residing in Marine Lines.

The Marine Drive police have arrested a 22-year-old house help who allegedly took advantage of his employer’s neurological disorder in order to blackmail and extort her.

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The accused, Sachin Namuna Gupta, 22, who originally hails from Jharkhand’s Mahugaon, was working for past three years as a house maid with the complainant, a 41-year-old medical professional residing in Marine Lines.

The complainant’s wife is suffering from a disorder called in which a patient experiences physical and sensory problems, such as paralysis, numbness, blindness, deafness or seizures for a brief time.

According to the police, the woman has alleged that the accused in May this year, Gupta had clicked a picture by getting close to her when she had an attack. Later, he started blackmailing the woman using the photograph, as he wanted to buy a laptop. He had threatened to upload the photograph on social media and defame her, if the woman failed to give him money to buy a laptop.

Though the woman had stopped talking to Gupta, she had not revealed the episode to her husband. Last week the house help threatened her thrice and demanded money, a police officer said.

He thereafter repeatedly threatened the woman on Friday also. She then called her husband back home urgently and narrated everything to him. Her husband immediately lodged a complaint with the Marine Drive police station.

The police arrested Gupta in the evening and seized a laptop and mobile phone from his possession. He has been booked under sections 384 (Extortion), 385 (Putting person in fear of injury in order to commit extortion) of Indian Penal Code.