Mumbai: An extortion call made to filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, supposedly by a notorious gangster from UP who threatened to kill Bhatt's daughter Alia if he did not pay Rs 50 lakh, sent the Mumbai Police Crime Branch into a tizzy. After four days of joint efforts with the UP Special Task Force, the culprit, who turned out to be a debt ridden 27-year-old Lucknow native, was nabbed in his hometown on Thursday.
According to Crime Branch officials, Mr. Bhatt received a call on his cell phone on February 26 this year from a man who identified himself as Bablu Shrivastav, a notorious gangster from Uttar Pradesh with a long history of kidnapping and other crimes, who is currently lodged in the central jail in Bareilly.
“The caller threatened to kill Mr Bhatt's daughter Alia and told him to wait for further instructions. Shortly thereafter, Mr Bhatt received a text message from the same number, demanding Rs 50 lakh. The message contained an account number, and the caller instructed Mr. Bhatt to transfer the money in the account,” said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) KMM Prasanna.
Mr. Bhatt informed the police about the incident, and the matter was assigned to the Anti Extortion Cell for investigation. AEC officials set about obtaining the registration details of the number from which the call and the text message had come, while the Mumbai Police Crime Branch top brass got in touch with the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force.
“One of the concerns was Shrivastav conducting his criminal activities from inside the prison, and the UP STF set about verifying whether the caller was indeed him. Meanwhile, we also got details of the number from which the calls were made and started tracking it,” said an officer who was part of the investigating team.
Meanwhile, the Crime Branch stayed in touch with Mr Bhatt and convinced him to register an FIR, which he filed with the Juhu police on Wednesday evening. At the same time, the UP STF informed the Mumbai Crime Branch that they had identified the caller and were taking him into custody. The culprit was identified as Sandip Sahu (27), a resident of Lucknow.
Source said that Sahu, in his questioning, has said that he was under heavy debt and desperate to raise money, which is why he decided to try and extort the filmmaker.
“Sahu, who used to work as a salesman, had taken a loan of Rs five lakh, partly from some relatives and partly from private money lenders at a heavy rate of interest to set up a footwear store in Lucknow. The business did not work and he had to shut down the store, after which he had no means to repay his debts, while the interest kept multiplying. He then came to Mumbai to try his luck, and became acquainted with some aspiring and struggling actors, through which he got numbers of some filmmakers,” said Mr Prasanna.
Sahu, however, made the mistake of using his own number to make the extortion call as well as sending his own account number to Mr Bhatt, which helped the police identify him.
An AEC team left for UP on Thursday morning and is expected to return with Sahu, who has been charged with extortion under the Indian Penal Code, by Friday, said officials.
