Ex-BBC staffer held on blackmail charge
Senior journalist Vinod Verma, who has worked with the BBC and is a member of the Editors Guild, was arrested by the Chhattisgarh Police from his Ghaziabad residence at 3.30 am Friday on charges of blackmail and extortion.
Verma claims that he is being targeted because he has a sex CD featuring a minister. ‘‘I have a sex CD of a Chhattisgarh Minister, and that is why the Chhattisgarh government is not happy with me," Verma told reporters while being taken to court after hours of questioning. The minister has called the CD "fake" and said it can be investigated by any agency.
Currently, a freelance journalist, Verma was part of a fact-finding team of the Editors Guild that travelled to Chhattisgarh last year to examine cases of intimidation of journalists.
About 500 porn CDs, Rs 2
Am being framed as I have sex CD of minister, says arrested scribe
lakh in cash, a pen drive, a laptop and a diary were seized from the journalist's residence.
His arrest followed a complaint by one Prakash Bajaj, a member of the Chhattisgarh BJP's IT cell, which alleged that "someone had a CD of his boss (the minister)". Late last night, the police took a flight to Delhi and went to a shop in Ghaziabad that had allegedly made 1,000 copies of the sex tape.
The shop owner allegedly named Verma as the person who had commissioned the copies. The Chhattisgarh government claims Verma was colluding with the opposition Congress to discredit the BJP government. The journalist, it says, is related to state Congress chief Bhupesh Vaghel. Vaghel has denied the association.
Asked to comment on accusations that he was making CDs, Verma told journalists, while being taken to court, "Just pen drive... nothing else. I have nothing to with CDs. The CD is in public domain." A case of blackmail and extortion has been registered against him. Raipur DSP said that Verma had been booked under the Information Technology (IT) Act.
As news of the arrest spread, many senior journalists from the electronic and print media gathered outside the Ghaziabad police station. AAP leader and former journalist Ashutosh termed the development as an "attack on the press".