NOIDA: A woman journalist was arrested and a social activist detained by the Gautam Budh Nagar police for allegedly blackmailing Union Minister Dr Mahesh Sharma on Monday. Sharma is also the BJP’s nominee from the Gautam Budh Nagar Lok Sabha constituency.
The accused journalist had been allegedly demanding Rs 2 crore from the minister, failing which she and her associates had threatened to leak an alleged “objectionable” video clip of Sharma to the press. An FIR has been registered in Noida’s Sector 20 police station against the scribe and her boss and an investigation is on, police said.
According to Vaibhav Krishna, the Senior Superintendent of Police of Gautam Budh Nagar, said, “Dr Sharma informed me that someone was trying to blackmail him. The blackmailer had sent a woman to the minister at Kailash Hospital, Noida with a letter asking him to pay `50 lakhs to the girl on Monday and the remaining `1.50 crore later, failing which the blackmailer would make the video public,” Krishna said.
“We found the video had nothing damaging in it and showed the minister talking to a group of people,” he said.