Woman chats with businessmen, brothers blackmail for money

LUCKNOW: Two men and their sister were arrested for blackmailing businessmen, in Ghazipur police station area on Tuesday.
The police claimed that the woman used to chat and exchange Facebook posts, befriending targets and then her brothers used to blackmail them threatening to make the "sleazy" conversations go viral.
The accused, Dimple Singh and her brothers Neeraj Kumar Sinha and Ashutosh Kumar Sinha, are from Gopalganj district of Bihar.Confessing to their crimes, they said they had ventured into it because they had failed to qualify exams for studying further.
ASP (trans-Gomti) Harendra Kumar said some traders had complained to the police about a gang in which a woman initially honey-traps them by chatting on Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media and then her aides extort money from them, threatening a police case for sending "lewd" messages to the woman.
"We collected details of the phone numbers from the victims and worked on the case secretly," said Kumar.
In three cases, the money was deposited in an account in the name of Neeraj.
On Tuesday, a trader from Indiranagar contacted us with the same complaint. We asked him to remain in touch with those blackmailing him," Kumar said.
The trader got another call from the blackmailer, who asked to meet him in Meena Market to give the cash or face police action.
"We asked the trader to reach the place while a team in civvies accompanied him. The police team hid near a house and nabbed Neeraj and Ashutosh who had reached the spot to collect the cash," he said, adding that the team later nabbed Dimple.
The ASP said Dimple confessed that she used to engage traders in chats through messenger on Facebook and later used to take contact numbers of her targets for WhatsApp.
"The brothers then used to call the trader informing him of the conversation with Dimple, who used to talk sleaze with the victims. Fearing exposure or police case, the traders used to pay them hefty cash," the ASP said.
The gang had targeted more than 10 businessmen and extorted money amounting to Rs 10 lakh from the victims.
"The gang shifted base from Bihar four years ago and started to reside in a house in sector A, Indiranagar to run the racket," he said.