Suspended cop serial rapist, alleges model

CHANDIGARH:Suspended UT sub-inspector of police Naveen Phogat is now accused of raping a Mumabi-based model, 25, in a hotel room of the Industrial Area Phase-II on Thursday. The woman claims he is a blackmailer who has raped her serially.




The cop was suspended order on the charges of accepting lakh of rupees in bribe from an accused to let him off in the multi-crore-rupee Bitcoin scam unearthed in July. The Sector-31 police have now booked him under Section 376
(2) (committing rape by taking advantage of official position) of the

Indian Penal Code

(IPC). The model who accuses him of rape claims she first went to Phogat a few months ago to report

cybercrime

in which a sham Punjabi movie producer had threatened to put her dirty pictures on the internet.

She claims that, after that, he sourced those photographs and, on the basis of those, started blackmailing her. She says that, later, he took her to various hotels several times and raped her. Finally, she went to police against Phogat, their own sub-inspector from the Sector-31 police station. After her medical examination, police booked the cop, suspended him, and started a departmental inquiry against him.

Phogat was in the UT cyber cell when asked to lead an inquiry into the Bitcoin scam. Even his fellow investigators—head constable Ramesh Kumar and constable Sandeep Kumar—were also sent to the police lines in Sector 26 on administrative grounds.

In July, the UT police had filed a charge sheet against two men arrested on the charges of cheating a city-based businessman of about Rs10 crore on the pretext of investing in cryptocurrency bitcoin. The accused were Sanchit of Delhi and Rajesh Kumar 'Raju' of Rajasthan. Both were arrested from Delhi for direct links with main accused Amit Bhardwaj.

Police say they were involved in transferring funds to Bhardwaj from fake accounts. Reportedly, they had developed code to move more than Rs 30 lakh into various accounts of the main accused.

The FIR is against eight people. While four of them have been arrested, the others are on the run. Main accused Amit Bhardwaj and his brother, Vivek Bhardwaj, are in a Delhi prison.

The case was filed under Sections 420 (cheating), 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust), and 120-B (punishment of criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 66 (computer-related offences) of the IT Act.

The complaint was from an ex-serviceman. Amit Bhardwaj is owner of Gain Bitcoin, who is said to have assured him handsome returns on investing in bitcoin. The Bhardwaj brothers have duped 8,000-odd people to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore all over country under the same ruse. Both were earlier arrested from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi last year and put in a Pune jail. The complainant said he had met Amit through a Sector-49 resident of Chandigarh in Dubai in 2016 and the conman had lured him with promise of a high profit upon buying virtual currency.