CHANDIGARH: Seven people arrested for allegedly giving death threats and making extortion calls to several MLAs had accomplices in Pakistan and some countries in the Middle East, the Haryana Police said on Saturday.
Four MLAs of Haryana, three from Punjab and two from Delhi had recently received threat calls from the accused.
The accused -- Amit Yadav alias Radheshyam Kumar Yadav, Saddiq Anwar, Sanoj Kumar, Kaish Alam, Dulesh Alam, Badre Alam and Abulesh Alam -- were arrested recently.
During investigation, it was found that the accomplices of the accused were Iqbal Kaish Alam, Sadiq and Rakesh in the Middle East and Ali, Nazir, Wasim, Shabbir, Imran, M D Khan and Rafiq in Pakistan.
The accused tried to extort money from the dignitaries in a planned manner by claiming to be local gangsters, the police said in a statement.
The arrested accused, Kaish Alam, had lived in Dubai for about three years.
WhatsApp chats among some of the accused revealed that in the last eight months 867 transactions were made through 727 bank accounts, and a transaction of about Rs 2.77 crore was detected, the police said.
All these bank accounts were operated by Iqbal Kaish Alam, Sadiq, Rakesh, Ali, Nazir, Wasim, Shabbir, Imran, MD Khan and Rafiq sitting in Pakistan and Middle East countries, they said.
These bank accounts have been frozen.
The money received by fraudsters using these bank accounts is sent to Pakistan through hawala, the police said, adding that further investigation in the matter was underway.