Man held for demanding ₹25 lakh extortion from politician-cum-trader

LUCKNOW: A youth in Lucknow was arrested by the UP Special Task Force (STF) on Thursday for allegedly demanding ₹25 lakh extortion from a politiciancum-trader of Gonda, Santosh Kumar Tewari.

He used the Internet to contact the trader who got an impression that the extortion calls were being made from other countries like the US.

The arrested youth was identified as Dhirendra Sharma of Gomti Nagar’s Viram Khand who owns a mobile shop near Husadiya crossing.

After a month-long effort, the STF nabbed him from a Gwari locality of Gomti Nagar by tracing his location and handed him over to the Gonda police for legal proceedings as an FIR of extortion against him was lodged there on August 24.

The FIR was lodged by politician-cum-trader of Gonda.

Abhishek Singh, SSP, STF said the Gonda police had sought the STF’s expertise to track the caller as the extortion calls were made through Internet calling applications.

He said the probe revealed that the accused made the call

THE ACCUSED MADE CALLS TO HIM THROUGH INTERNET APP BUT WAS TRACKED DOWN BY STF

by downloading a special application on his mobile phone.

“The mobile numbers of US used to flash on the trader’s phone so he used to have an impression that the calls were made from abroad,” he stated.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that he got Tewari’s number through a friend, Mohit Jaiswal of Siddarthnagar.

Jaiswal had business links with Tewari who frequently visited the shop of the accused to purchase cell phones and accessories, said the officer.

Singh said the accused somehow had a feeling that Tewari would easily pay the extortion amount and thus planned to make extortion calls through Internet.

Dhirendra Sharma also believed that the police would never be able to track him if he used a special application for Internet calling, but the STF managed to track him down.