MALKANGIRI: Malkangiri Sadar police on Friday arrested one Santosh Kumar Mohanty (31) alias Pintu of Raghunathpur village in Khurda for posing as naxal commander R Rajeswar Tarai and extorting money from people.
Briefing mediapersons here, SDPO Sachin Patel said Mohanty was apprehended from Puri basing on a complaint filed by Anil Barakandaj, who owns a medicine store in MV-100 village. As per the complaint filed on August 9, Anil had received a WhatsApp call from a number and the person at the other end introduced himself as Tarai. The caller threatened Anil and asked him to pay Rs 2,000. The same person made another call a few days later and demanded Rs 5,000 from Anil while threatening to kill him if he did not pay up.
During investigation, it was ascertained that Mohanty had got Anil’s mobile number and other details from Google. Anil was not alone. Mohanty also made several such calls to businessmen and traders in Malkangiri.
Mohanty was earlier involved in many cases registered with Malkangiri and Motu police stations, Patel said. He informed Mohanty had extorted Rs 1,15,000 from different people and the money was sent to his PhonePe account.
Mohanty was arrested under section 398 (4) of BNS. Three mobile phones, one SIM card, three ATM cards and one memory card along with a card reader was seized from. Further probe is on, said the SDPO.