Two self-styled extortionists held

A 35-year-old civil engineering diploma holder has been arrested here along with his friend for demanding Rs 50 lakh in extortion from a Delhi-based businessman by posing as underworld don Fazl-ur-Rehman, police said on Thursday.  Nitin Kochar, 35, the mastermind, was arrested on Monday along with his friend Rimple Luthra, 35, from Sector 40 of Noida in Uttar Pradesh. 

Police said Kochar made the extortion call to the businessman, whose name has been withheld, and his wife on June 13 posing as underworld don Fazal-ur-Rehman and demanded Rs 50 lakh threatening them with dire consequences if the demand was not met. Fazl-ur-Rehman alias ‘Fazlu Rehman’, who is now lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, and two of his accomplices had allegedly abducted Adani group chairman Gautam Adani in a car in 1997 from the outskirts of Ahmedabad in Gujarat and released him after extorting Rs 15 crore as ransom at the behest of Dubai-based gangster Irfan Goga. Investigators said the culprits felt they would avoid the police dragnet from tricks they claimed to have learnt from a television serial “Crime Patrol”.

“They were continuously changing their locations while making a series of extortion calls to the complainant from distant locations,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav said. 

The officer said the accused collected the personal information about the businessman and his family from a social networking site and also visited his house in the guise of a repair worker before making the extortion call.