B’day blackmail: 33-yr-old serial sex offender held

A 33-year-old man has been arrested from Goa for allegedly sexually assaulting several women after befriending them on the pretext of enjoying grand celebrations, stated the Kalwa police.

The accused, Ashok Suravase alias Jitu, was apprehended based on the complaint filed by a 23-yearold woman from Diva, whom he sexually assaulted with this modus operandi. In her complaint to the police, she narrated how she fell victim to the accused who befriended her during his stay at a rented flat in Thane. “On the pretext of organising a huge birthday party for her, the accused met the woman and subsequently offered her a spiked drink. As she fell unconscious, he not only sexually assaulted her but also clicked objectionable photos of her,” said the Kalwa police station senior inspector, Manhor Awhad.

Next, he started to blackmail her. Fed up with constant harassment, when the woman asked him to marry her, he bluntly refused. He then forwarded the woman’s intimate photos to the family of her groom-to-be. Not stopping there, he later posted the photos on Facebook, while labelling the complainant as an escort. As a result, she was further harassed by several men, asking for sexual favours. "During the course of investigation, we found that the accused trapped several other women with similar modus operandi,” Awhad said, adding that it was hard to nab him as he was constantly changing his locations and contact numbers. A Solapur native, he was earlier traced to Karnataka but he later escaped to Goa where was finally arrested just in the nick of time as he was planning to flee from there, too.