Gandhinagar, Nov 7 (IANS): An Ahmedabad tea-seller and laundryman, who were allegedly running a thriving extortion racket and had made enough money to even own a BMW car, have been arrested, police said.
A desire to earn quick money, travel in luxury cars, use high-end mobile phones and flaunt their status led tea-seller, Arif Ghanchi, 27, and laundry man, Yusuf Ghanchi, 37, to blackmail businessmen and extort money out of them to fund their lavish lifestyle.
"The Sarkhej police arrested them on Tuesday, seized the car, and have obtained five days remand of the duo in connection with the crime registered against them for extortion," DCP Zone 7, Premsukh Delu, told IANS.
"One of the victims of this duo, a businessman residing in Sarkhej area, filed a police complaint that a duo was extorting money from him and until now they had extracted over Rs 31 lakh out of him. After verifying all the evidence provided by him, an offence was registered. Currently we are investigating if more victims were conned and have urged them to come forward and file a complaint," he added.
"Yusuf runs a laundry and Arif runs a roadside tea-stall. With such profiles, it is unlikely that they could buy such a high-end car. The tea stall and the laundry were just front to carry out their misdeeds," Delu said.
According to the police, the duo would gather details regarding the industrial unit owners and blackmail them by threatening to get their licences suspended by complaining to the authorities concerned.
"Then after extracting that amount, they would approach the victims and claim to have influential contacts through whom they could regularise the flaws. For this, they both would extract more money," added Delu.
They had used this tactic to extort the money from the Sarkhej businessman, till he had enough and approached the police, and many others.
The accused had even filed an application at Sarkhej police station to blackmail a potential victim.
"Both of them have an application registered in Sarkhej police station of trying to commit suicide by poisoning themselves. If the victims stopped paying them, they would threaten them to implicate them in the suicide application case," added Delu.