Actor Leena Paul sent to 15-day police custody in Rs 200 cr extortion case
New Delhi: Extortion case accused Southern movie star Leena Maria Paul and the other three acquaintances were sent to 15 days of police custody, while the other two accused also got police custody for seven days by the Patiala House court on Monday.
After their arrest on Sunday late evening, they were produced before the court. The actor's boyfriend Sukesh Chandrashekhar was initially booked for allegedly extorting Rs 200 crore from former Fortis Healthcare promoter Shivinder Singh's wife Aditi Singh in the last month.
In the FIR, Aditi alleged she was cheated of over Rs 200 crore by a man posing as the 'law secretary' who claimed during one call that a Union Minister was listening in after promising to help with her husband's case.
He was also running an extortion racket from inside the Rohini jail, a senior official said. Now the police have booked them under the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA).
A fresh FIR of cheating, extortion and criminal conspiracy was also registered against him by the EOW last week for allegedly duping the wife of the former promoter of Ranbaxy Malvinder Mohan Singh, of Rs 4 crore.
Apart from Leena and Sukesh, police confirmed the other accused, Kamlesh Kothari — through whom Sukesh and Leena bought the Chennai bungalow, Samuel, Leena's manager, Arun Muthu- who helped with the cars for Sukesh, and Mohanraj, Sukesh's longtime lawyer.
According to the city police officials, Sukesh has a criminal background and also was produced before a Delhi court on Saturday and sent to police custody for 16 days. He was recently arrested from jail along with seven others, including a bank manager, for their alleged involvement in the extortion case.
Interestingly, Sukesh was using a mobile phone app to impersonate senior and high ranking government officials, he would call the victims to strike the deal and the victim would see the number desired by him, a source said.
Investigation revealed that accused Sukesh Chandrashekhar duped Shivinder's wife Aditi and Manvinder's wife Japna Singh several crores.
During the investigation, the EOW also arrested two jail officials — Deputy Superintendent Subhash Batra and assistant jail superintendent Dharam Singh Meena, and three men, Komal Poddar, who is a manager at RBL in Connaught Place, and his two associates Avinash Kumar and Jitender Narula for helping the accused to dup money during his imprisonment.
Sources said the EOW's special investigation team found that Sukesh was using two phones.
"He was using a prepaid international SIM card in his iPhone and a local SIM in his old handset. He had been using these SIM cards for the last year. The local SIM was procured on a fake ID of a resident of north-east Delhi, but the address was found to be fake. Sukesh was making spoof calls using several paid apps and some jail officials allegedly recharged his SIM cards every week," police sources said.
During questioning, Sukesh also disclosed his financial transactions with jail officials and claimed he was giving them Rs 65 lakh every fortnight. "He said he had struck a deal with a jail official when he was arrested by the Crime Branch in connection with the Election Commission bribery case and moved to Rohini jail last year. A jail official collected the money from his associate after a fortnight," police sources added.
Further, the Police informed the court that they need to investigate the case thoroughly, and different teams of Delhi Police need to visit various locations, including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kochi.
The EOW also said in the court that during the investigation three bank accounts of Leena have been found, they have to be investigated, some people are absconding who have foreign links.
