Govt officials, Delhi doctor were rogue cops’ targets

NEW DELHI: The two Delhi Police constables arrested for kidnapping a UP engineer had planned to extort money from other government officials too. The duo had prepared fake arrest warrants of at least three more government servants in UP and a Delhi doctor, and were going to slap false cases of disproportionate assets against them, the Rampur police has said.Meanwhile, Delhi Police has suspended the constables.
“The cops had planned to target a circle officer of BSNL in Dadri, a senior officer of the UP Power Corporation Limited who lives in Vaishali and another power official in Ghaziabad. A doctor based in Delhi was also on their list,” said IG Devendra Singh Chauhan. This is not all. The constables told interrogators that before kidnapping Bansal, they used the same modus operandi to extort Rs 30 lakh each from Pramod Gupta and Harish Arora, both Rajasthan-based businessman. They have doled out another Rs 50 lakh from a businessman in east Delhi.
The UP police has said that the duo admitted to accepting bribes from those accused of cheating. “The cops said they recently received money from a couple of men arrested by the crime branch for their involvement in a fake cellphone tower racket. They claimed that they had let the accused go after instructions from an inspector. However their claims are yet to be verified. We have asked Delhi Police to probe this angle,” said an investigating officer.
Police are also trying to trace the owner of the car used for the kidnapping. “We have found that the car doesn’t belong to Ajay, contrary to earlier claims. Ajay had borrowed the car from someone else,” added the officer.
A senior crime branch official said, “While Mukesh was on leave after his elder brother — who was also with Delhi Police — passed away, Ajay was absent for the past three days. We have ordered an ACP-level officer to probe the case further. However, the rumour of an inspector being involved is not true as it was the same officer who had recommended that the duo be moved out of the crime branch unit before he went on. DCP (crime) Sanjay Jain has also said that an internal probe is being conducted to look into all aspects of the case.