BENGALURU: Sleuths of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) arrested two men who allegedly tried to extort money from politicians and businessmen by creating their fake sleazy videos. The police are on the hunt for another accused who is absconding.
The police identified the arrested accused as Santhosh alias Suresh Ranjan and Puttaraju, both residents of Mysuru.
The police said the gang members followed the movements of politicians, businessmen and professors in Bengaluru and Mysuru, and waited for their targets to stay in hotels. After the victims checked out, the gang would book the same room, shoot videos using sex workers and then edit the clips to make fake sleazy videos.
Using these clips, the gang allegedly threatened their victims, claiming that there was a hidden camera kept in their hotel rooms. They would then try to extort money from their victims.
The accused also threatened to upload the videos on social media if they were not paid.
Based on a complaint filed by a victim in Bengaluru, the two accused from Mysuru were arrested on Wednesday. They were tracked by the phone number that they had used to make the extortion call. The police recovered a pen drive containing the sleazy videos from them. One of the arrested accused was running a prostitution ring in Mysuru. He used these sex workers to shoot the videos and threaten people, the police added.
Amid reports that the gang was honey trapping politicians, K Harish Gowda, the MLA from the Chamaraja constituency in Mysuru, told reporters that he is not one of the victims of the gang. But two people from his constituency had approached him complaining that a gang had targeted them and that was why he asked the police to investigate the issue, he added.