Manesar man arrested for making extortion calls to car washers

GURUGRAM: A Manesar resident has been arrested for allegedly trying to extort money from car cleaners working at a residential society along the Southern Peripheral Road. He was threatening to brutally thrash the car cleaners if they failed to give a share of their income to him, police said.
The man has been identified as Gaurav alias Rahil, a resident of Bar Gujjar in Manesar.According to police, he was using a mobile phone he had found to make extortion calls to car cleaners. He was demanding Rs 100 per month for every car they cleaned, an officer said.
The matter came to light when a Sector 10 resident filed a police complaint about ‘misuse’ of a phone she lost three years ago. She had approached Sector 10A police station on September 9 and told police that she had lost a mobile phone with a SIM card in August 2018. On September 5, she came to know that her SIM card was being used by a person to make extortion calls to car cleaners working at Ireo Victory Valley society in Sector 67, she told police.
“When I lost my phone, I didn’t request the telecom company to discontinue my mobile number, thinking that it would be deactivated once I stopped recharging its balance,” the woman said in her complaint.
An FIR was soon registered at Sector 65 police station under sections 379 (theft) and 384 (extortion) of the IPC. After weeks of investigation, the crime unit of Sector 40 arrested Gaurav in Sector 31 on Tuesday. “Gaurav said he had picked up the phone from a street. He started using the number for making extortion calls,” police spokesperson Subhash Boken said.
Several car cleaners working in new sectors said they have been victims of such extortion from local goons. Apsar Ali, who works as a car washer at a residential society in Sector 110A, said he has been receiving threatening calls from two numbers. “The callers are asking me to pay up a share of my income. They are threatening to break my bones if I don’t comply with their directions,” Ali said.