New Delhi, June 23 (IANS) A 35-year-old civil engineering diploma holder has been arrested here along with his friend for demanding Rs 50 lakh in extortion from a Delhi-based businessman by posing as underworld don Fazl-ur-Rehman, police said on Thursday.
Nitin Kochar, 35, the mastermind, was arrested on Monday along with his friend Rimple Luthra, 35, from Sector 40 of Noida in Uttar Pradesh.
Police said Kochar made the extortion call to the businessman, whose name has been withheld, and his wife on June 13 posing as underworld don Fazal-ur-Rehman and demanded Rs 50 lakh threatening them with dire consequences if the demand was not met.
Fazl-ur-Rehman alias 'Fazlu Rehman', who is now lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail, and two of his accomplices had allegedly abducted Adani group chairman Gautam Adani in a car in 1997 from the outskirts of Ahmedabad in Gujarat and released him after extorting Rs 15 crore as ransom at the behest of Dubai-based gangster Irfan Goga.
Investigators said the culprits felt they would avoid the police dragnet from tricks they claimed to have learnt from a television serial "Crime Patrol".
"They were continuously changing their locations while making a series of extortion calls to the complainant from distant locations," Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav said.
The officer said the accused collected the personal information about the businessman and his family from a social networking site and also visited his house in the guise of a repair worker before making the extortion call.
"To overcome their financial crisis, Kochar and Luthra planned to extort money from well-established businessmen from Delhi and NCR (National Capital Region) and targeted the complainant as they were very well aware of his financial standings," the officer said.
The officer said the accused were also in the process of extorting money from a woman engaged in the beauty parlour business at Lajpat Nagar and a bakery owner residing in New Friends Colony -- both in south Delhi.
"The accused had also tried to extort Rs 1 crore from a renowned south Delhi businessman last year but their ploy failed as the complainant approached the police," the officer said.
Police said Kochar, who has done diploma in civil engineering and is engaged in construction business, had shifted his residence from south Delhi's East of Kailash to Noida 13 years ago.
Kochar suffered a major loss in his business and to overcome that he, along with his childhood friend Luthra, who also shifted his residence to Noida from East of Kailash three months ago, planned to extort money from businessmen.
Luthra accepted Kochar's proposal as he was jobless for the last one year.
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