Navi Mumbai: Two Class IX kids extort Rs 3 lakh from classmate

NAVI MUMBAI: Two Class IX students of an English medium school in Kamothe and their accomplice have been booked by the police for allegedly extorting money from a classmate. Cash and valuables worth almost Rs 3 lakh were extorted from the victim in the last 18 months, with one of the accused threatening to kill him and his parents if he didn’t comply. The two accused students boasted to the victim that their accomplice, a cousin of one of them, knew goons and had choppers and swords. The accused students are minors, while the cousin is not.
The matter came to light when the victim, who is 15, went to a Kalamboli hospital on Sunday for a check-up because of rapid weight loss, and his mother took a call meant for him. “Kaam ho gaya kya?” was what the caller, who was one of the accused, said. Asked about his identity, the caller introduced himself as a friend of her son.
Accused threatened to kill boy
Upon being questioned about this suspicious call, the victim was evasive. The next day, the victim’s father, who runs a transport business, discovered that cash was missing from their home. Asked about it, the son said he spent it on snacks. Not believing him, his father took him to the shop that he said he bought the snacks from. The shopkeeper denied his version. When his father threatened to take him to the police station, he said he would confide in his mother.
The police complaint was filed by the father on Tuesday. The family, which includes a daughter, live in Kamothe, as do all of the accused. The father, along with the son, met the school principal and narrated the ordeal. The boy told the principal that just in the last 10 days, one of the accused had extorted Rs 70,000 from him. When the parents of this accused boy were called by the principal, they threatened the transporter, who then approached the police.
According to the complaint, between January 2018 and June 2019, Rs 2.5 lakh in cash, a gold chain worth Rs 30,000 and a mobile phone worth Rs 10,000 were extorted by the accused. “The main accused, a classmate of my son, has been threatening my son for a year and a half with the help of his cousin. He threatened to kill my son and our family. The other classmate twice extorted money. It was the cousin who did the actual collection. He would drive his car to the school to collect. Twice, he even came near our residence to collect money from my son. I don’t know what they were doing with the money,” the victim’s father told the police.
“The cash that’s now gone was kept for medical, insurance, and savings purposes in our home. The accused sold the gold chain and the mobile phone after pocketing them from my son. The cousin is not a minor,” the father said.
Assistant inspector Anil Devale of Kamothe police said, “The accused minors have been booked under the IPC’s sections 386 (extortion by putting a person in fear of death or grievous injury) and 34 (involvement of a number of persons with common intention).”