In a midnight crackdown on bribery and extortion, a police inspector and three journalists were arrested for demanding ₹8 lakh from a call centre owner, the Noida police said on Wednesday.
All four were nabbed following a tip-off, said Gautam Buddh Nagar Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Vaibhav Krishna.
“Station House Officer [Sector 20 police station] Manoj Kumar Pant, and journalists Sushil Pandit, Udit Goyal and Raman Thakur have been arrested,” he said.
While a luxury car was seized from one of the scribes, a .32 bore pistol was recovered from another journalist, Mr. Krishna said.
“Prima facie it seems the car was used for some criminal activity as its registration number was found to be fake. Besides this, ₹8 lakh were also seized,” he said.
Ghaziabad resident Pushpendra Chauhan had on January 27 approached Mr. Krishna with a complaint against the inspector and his accomplices alleging that they were demanding money in exchange for removing his name from a November 2018 case.
“I ordered a probe into the allegations, which were found true by Superintendent of Police [City] Sudha Singh. A trap was laid to ensure that Mr. Pant was caught red-handed while demanding a bribe. The trap was being planned since Tuesday morning. We finally succeeded late at night,” Mr. Krishna said.
Mr. Chauhan was asked to come to the police station with the money late on Tuesday night.
According to the plan, he carried 400 notes of ₹2,000 each coated in phenolphthalein powder.
The serial numbers of all currency notes were noted by the officers.
Independent witnesses
Apart from the police, two independent witnesses, both government officials from different departments, were also involved in the operation to establish reliability and authenticity of the action, Mr. Krishna said.
Mr. Pant has been booked under charges of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, while the journalists have been charged under the IPC Section 384 (extortion) along with the Arms Act, he said.
