Gang that extorted spa visitors busted in Ggm

GURUGRAM: The police, late Monday night, busted a gang for allegedly honey trapping senior executives who visited spa centres in Gurugram.

The six-member gang allegedly made objectionable videos to extort lakhs of rupees from its victims, the police said Tuesday.

The suspects were identified as Syed Rahat Ali Zeddin of Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, and Shahna, Alka and Seema of Gurugram. Four members of the gang were arrested from a mall in Sector 23, where they had set up a meeting with the chief accountant of a prominent hotel in the city to take ₹12 lakh—a sum they agreed to accept after raising an initial demand of ₹1 crore to settle a false rape case registered against the complainant, the police said.

Assistant commissioner of police (crime) Karan Goel said the gang members used to get data from spa centres across the city and make calls to provide spa and massage services at home and hotels. “It is a six-member gang, including two middlemen, who used to trap professionals from Delhi-ncr. They used to collect the data of people visiting spa centres and on the pretext of offering services used to trap them. They used different techniques to extort people,” he said, adding that two more other members of the gang are yet to be identified. Goel said they were also probing the role of spa employees.

According to the police, the complainant had visited one of the spas last month and allegedly befriended one of the suspects, Shahna. She started calling him and invited him to her rented accommodation in DLF Phase 3 on October 3, the police said, adding that the following day, he received a call from her alleging that he had raped her and she was approaching the police.

This scared the victim and he switched off his mobile phone, the police said.

Based on her complaint, the police said a case of rape was registered at DLF Phase 3 police station.

Goel said the complainant contacted his colleagues for help and narrated his ordeal following which they met the woman and requested her to take her complaint back. “To their shock, she demanded ₹1 crore and asked for an advance to not record her statement before the magistrate in the district and sessions court,” the DCP said.

A friend of the executive recorded their conversation and approached the police, which then laid a trap.

Meanwhile, Zeddin, one of the accused, allegedly called the man and introduced himself as the woman’s lawyer. He demanded ₹12 lakh to settle the matter and called them to Delhi for a meeting, where again the conversation was recorded by the victim’s friend, the police said.

Goel said they laid a trap and when the gang members came to collect the money in a mall in Sector 23, they caught them redhanded and recovered the cheque and cash from their possession.

A case under section 384 (extortion) and 389 (putting a person in fear or accusation of offence, in order to commit extortion) of the Indian Penal Code was registered at DLF Phase 3 police station. The accused were produced before the district and sessions court and were sent to judicial custody on Tuesday.