Three men — two of them unemployed engineering graduates — were arrested for allegedly posing as Income Tax department officials and attempting to extort ₹10 crore from a priest in Yeshwantpur.
The police nabbed them on Friday night at Mathikere when they arrived to collect the money from the victim, Ganesh. “We formed a special team after his wife Veena Ganesh filed a complaint with us,” said the police.
The accused, Venkatesh (24) and Vivek (22) — both engineering graduates — along with with their friend Kumar (44) had allegedly come up with an elaborate plan to extract a good sum from the priest.
Venkatesh lived in the same locality as Ganesh who would often tell people that he visited the homes of VVIPs to conduct pujas. Venkatesh and his friends got Ganesh’s phone number and called him up on Wednesday.
“When Veena answered the phone, they pretended to be IT officials and informed her of a disproportionate asset case that had been opened against her. They also warned her that the house would be raided in two days by a team from Delhi,” said a senior police officer.
In her complaint to the police, Veena said the men then told her that they were alerting her of the raid out of concern. However, she got suspicious when they said they could prevent her house from being raided if she paid them ₹10 crore in cash. In return, they promised to close the file against her.
According to the police, the men contacted her several times over the following days and used different numbers. During one of the calls, they fixed a time and place for the money drop. They told her that they would arrive in a red car at a spot near her house to collect the ransom amount on Friday night.
What they did not realise was that Veena and Ganesh had lodged a complaint with Yeshwantpur police. “We told her to agree to their demands,” said the police.
One Friday night, a special team of police led by Chethan Singh Rathore nabbed the accused when they arrived at the predesignated spot in a red car. The trio were arrested and two cellphones which they used to make the calls were seized.
According to the police, this was their first attempt at crime.
The trio have been booked for extortion, criminal intimidation, impersonation and other sections of the Indian Penal Code. They have been remanded in judicial custody.
