MUMBAI: A 24-year-old man and two of his friends have been arrested for allegedly extorting Rs 6.5 crore from the son of a woman from Dahisar who works in the US. They threatened to report him to the police by framing him in a drugs case, said the police. The three arrested accused also had unnatural sex with the 23-year-old youth and made a video of the act and threatened to upload it on social media.
The men arrested by the crime branch unit 12 have been identified as Yash Chalke (24), Shrutik Sonawane (20) and Prathmesh Shinde (20). All the accused are resident of western suburbs.
Chalke had got acquainted with the woman's son at a coaching class where they studied together. In 2018, Chalke had been arrested in a drug consumption case and was later granted bail, said the police.
According to a police complaint lodged by the NRI woman, who is now in India, Chalke and his two friends allegedly threatened to frame her son in the drug consumption case in which Chalke had been arrested.
'Three held for extortion used local politicians'
Sources said Chalke even brought along some local politicians to the house of the NRI woman's family and later invoked their names to extort money. The police said they will be calling these local politicians to record their statements.
Eventually, as the family stopped paying up, the three accused took the woman's son to friend's house. They had unnatural sex with him and video-recorded the act and threatened to make the video viral on social media and extorted money from him, said the sources.
The police also said Chalke, after his initial arrest, had taken Rs 7,000 on loan from the NRI woman's family for his bail, but had failed to repay.
The NRI woman, who is the complainant in the case, has said that recently she had come to Mumbai and the accused called her and demanded Rs 62 lakh more. However, when she stopped taking their calls, the accused allegedly started stalking her and calling her from unknown phone numbers.
Late Friday night, they barged into her building and rang the doorbell of the house when the cops were called. The case has been handed over to crime branch.
