Gang blackmailed elderly men with intimate footage, arrested

There were seven members in the gang who filmed intimate videos of their targets and threatened them with fake rape cases.

A gang of extortionists who honey-trapped and extorted five elderly men in Delhi over the past one month were busted by the police during their attempt to target another 70-year-old private contractor, police said on Thursday.

The Police said the gang would target wealthy and elderly men. (REUTERS/Representative Image)

There were seven members in the gang who filmed intimate videos of their targets and threatened them with fake rape cases, Monika Bhardwaj, deputy commissioner of police (west), said.

Two of these suspects, including a young man and woman, were arrested from west Delhi’s Hari Nagar on Monday in the middle of their latest operation, the DCP said.

Their latest victim is a private contractor with a well-known private firm. “Recently, he came in contact with a 25-year-old woman and they kept in touch over WhatsApp. The woman kept asking the man to meet her after which he finally decided to see her on Monday,” said the DCP.

The victim had asked his 54-year-old friend male friend to accompany him. The woman too had come with a female friend. Together, they headed to a rented home in Tilak Nagar.

The moment the elderly man and his woman friend entered a room, the other woman allegedly locked the room from outside. Moments later, three men and two other women barged into the room and threatened to falsely implicate the elderly man and his friend in a rape case, the DCP said.

They allegedly video-recorded the victim and threatened to release it to their families and friends. “The gang took away ₹10,000 cash the men were carrying,” the DCP said.

The extortionists held the elderly man captive and one of them, identified later as 23-year-old Parminder Singh, accompanied the victim’s friend to
Hari Nagar to fetch ₹20 lakh ransom.

The man out to fetch money managed to alert the local police. Soon, Singh was nabbed. At his instance, the police conducted multiple raids to nab the 25-year-old woman who had allegedly honey-trapped the elderly victim.

The DCP said the gang would target wealthy and elderly men. “In the last month, they targeted at least five men with the same method. Those victims had decided not to approach the police due to social stigma,” said the DCP.