BENGALURU: A 35-year-old man, who ‘specialised’ in extorting policemen after filing cooked up complaints with the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) claiming illegal detentions, has now landed behind bars.
The accused, identified as Syed Sarfaroz, had a steady stream of success blackmailing police personnel of three different police stations. His luck ran out when the police smelt a rat after SHRC officials started visiting several police stations for inquiries.
While grilling Sarfaroz, police learnt that he had developed a network of police constables who fed him information about any suspects believed to be in illegal custody. The accused also used to walk into police stations on the pretext of filing complaints and try to find out about those held in lockups by befriending the policemen.
If he suspects that there are illegal detainees in the police station, he would file a complaint with the SHRC. He would then approach the policemen and demand money to settle the matter.
He was caught by the Shivajinagar police after he demanded Rs 50,000 from them. To trap him, they agreed to give him Rs 25,000. When he came to the station, he was arrested and a case of extortion was registered against him.
“Last week, the Shivajinagar police arrested a person, identified as Irshad, in connection with a case registered under the Arms Act. He was arrested around 2.30 am and kept in the police station. Irshad had threatened a hotel’s supplier on Broadway Road with weapons. The next day, Mohan, a DySP attached to SHRC, visited the police station. The DySP, after taking the statements of the station house officer and also going through the documents pertaining to the arrest, found that everything was legal,” DCP (East) D Devaraja said.
The incident made the police suspect foul play as in a similar manner, SHRC officers had visited Hennur, RT Nagar, Banaswadi, Ramamurthy Nagar, Shivajinagar and Pulakeshinagar police stations. “The officers then found that Sarfaroz was behind this, Devaraja said.
“After his arrest and inquiry, we found out that he was a habitual offender who had targeted North East, Whitefield and East divisions. He has a network of police constables and was getting information from them. He had extorted money from police personnel from three different police stations by blackmailing them,” the DCP added.