Scribe arrested for blackmailing

Ghaziabad/Raipur, Oct. 27: Senior journalist Vinod Verma was arrested by the Chhattisgarh police from his Ghaziabad residence at 3.30 am on Friday on charges of blackmail and extortion, the police said.

About 500 porn CDs, `2 lakh in cash, a pen drive, a laptop and a diary were seized from the journalist’s residence, said Raipur district superintendent of police Sanjeev Shukla.

Mr Verma, who earlier worked with BBC Hindi service and Amar Ujala, claimed that the Chhattisgarh police was not happy with him because he had a “sex CD of a Chhattisgarh minister”. Asked to comment on accusations that he was making CDs, Mr Verma told journalists while being taken from the Indirapuram Police Station to court, “just pen drive... Nothing else. I have nothing to with CDs. CD is in the public domain.” Mr Verma was picked from Mahagun Mansion Apartments in Indirapuram, on the outskirts of the national capital, by a team of the Chhattisgarh police with the help of the Ghaziabad police, senior superintendent of police (Ghaziabad) H.N. Singh said. According to him, a case of blackmail and extortion has been registered against the scribe at Pandri police station in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh. Raipur DSP Shukla added that Mr Verma has been booked under the Information Technology (IT) Act. The complainant, he said, was a man named Prakash Bajaj. Meanwhile, a court on Friday rejected the bail plea of the journalist.