Five arrested in extortion case

Hyderabad: The Punjagutta police on Tuesday arrested five persons on the charge of extorting Rs 3.08 lakh from a techie by impersonating Task Force police and reporters.

The complainant, Ravi Kumar Devi Reddy (28) is working as a software engineer in a multinational company at Gachibowli and the resident of KPHB.

On December 1, he lodged a complaint with the Punjagutta police, stating during his stay at a Sitara hotel at Ameerpet on November 29, he logged into an escort website and a persons, named Bhanu Prakash promised to send a girl to the hotel.

After sometime, two persons Vinod and Sandeep along with a girl Anusha (name changed) visited the room and introduced themselves as Bhanu Prakash’s friends and they asked Ravi Kumar to help the girl get a job and they left the room.

Confused Ravi Kumar started conversing with the girl and in the meantime Vinod, Hemanth and Sai Ram entered the room saying that they were Task Force police and threatened to arrest Ravi Kumar and the girl on the charges of prostitution. They took his debit and credit cards, mobile phones and also the gold ornaments from the girl and left the place.

On the same day, they had withdrawn Rs 1.85 lakh from his account and the next day they transferred Rs 1 lakh from his account to their bank account through online. On December 1, they again went to complainant’s office and extorted Rs 20,000 more in order to not to expose him, according to Punjagutta ACP Venkateshwarlu.

During investigation, the police took into custody of Bhanu Prakash, who was earlier arrested by the city police in a similar offence. On questioning, he told the police that, he had promised to send a girl to the techie.