3rd accused in extortion scam caught, cops on trail of kingpin

Ludhiana: Police have arrested the third accused in the inter-state extortion racket from Bihar. During investigation, police identified the kingpin of the extortion racket, a multi-lingual who made extortion calls. Attempts are on to trace him.
Earlier, police arrested Afzal Abdullah of Chhapra district, Bihar and Shakti Singh of Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh. Now, police have arrested the third accused, Raja Babu of Bihar. They have also frozen 70 bank accounts in which extortion money was parked.

Police commissioner Kaustubh Sharma said, “We have also arrested the third accused who has revealed more information related to the extortion racket. During questioning, Raja Babu said that the kingpin of the racket was a man named Gama of Bihar. According to Raja Babu, he used to work with a marriage band with which he used to visit different villages of Bihar. Gama met Raja Babu during one such visit, when he lured Raja Babu on the promise of easy money.
“Gama needed bank accounts to get the extorted money transferred, for which he used Raja Babu, Afzal and Shakti. They would get Rs 10,000 for arranging one bank account for Gama. They would approach poor people, who would get Rs 25,000 for their bank account details. These bank accounts were used by Gama to extort money,” the police commissioner said.
He added, “Gama spoke different languages fluently, a skill he used to call people of different states and extort money.”
Assistant commissioner of police - cyber crime, who is investigating the case said, “We have got all 70 bank accounts arranged by Shakti, Afzal and Raja frozen. These contain crores extorted by Gama, who has been extorting money since January this year. He started taking gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s name after the killing of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala.”
The ACP said that the accused made three extortion calls to three Ludhiana residents in the name of Lawrence Bishnoi. He would also send videos of weapons to threaten the person targeted.
On asking where they arranged numbers for making extortion calls, ACP Jaspreet said, “Usually, contacts are sold to fraudsters and Gama could have arranged contacts this way. This will be ascertained only after his arrest.”