Two held for extortion bid

LUDHIANA: The police on Thursday night arrested two persons for trying to extort Rs 15 lakh from a

hosiery factory

owner . The police have also recovered two

country-made pistols

of .32 bore, 12 live and eight used cartridges.

The duo had procured the weapons from Manger village in Bihar in March.

Jaspreet Singh, 21, of Krishna Colony and

Sawraj Singh

, 20 of Sundar Nagar had planned to extort money from Sanjiv Chopra to start a business. Sawraj was known to Sanjiv as both lived in the same locality.

Sanjiv got an extortion call for Rs 10 lakh on the evening of June 13. The accused said they had got a contract to kill him and to save himself, he must give them Rs 10 lakh. Sanjiv snubbed them.

On June 14, extortionists again called him up and Sanjiv gave them a piece of his mind. A few minutes later, when Sanjiv was standing outside his house and talking on phone, the accused came and fired at him. Sanjiv escaped, but the bullet hit the roof of his house."

After 10 minutes, they again called him up, all three times from different numbers, and said, "This was just a trailer and we will not spare you if you do not give Rs 15 lakh."

The frightened factory had no option other than calling the police because it was a question of his life and also protecting his business. And the owner called up the police. The CCTV camera installed at his house had captured both the accused.

Commissioner of police

RN Dhoke

said, "Both the accused are unemployed. They wanted to secure the distribution contract of a telecommunication company and needed money for it."

He said they had been planning the extortion since March and through a common friend, Raja, who now lives in Uttar Pradesh, they got to know that illegal weapons and cartridges could be purchased from Manger.

In March, both went to Bihar and purchased two weapons of .32 bore, each for Rs 20,000, and 20 live cartridges. To test them, they opened fire at the terrace of Jaspreet's house.

The police officer said both were looking for a wealthy target and Sawraj told Jaspreet about Sanjiv, the father of his friend.

The accused got the mobile number of Sanjiv from his Facebook profile.

The accused used different mobiles and SIMs to call up Sanjiv. They bought these from a shop located on the ground floor of one of the accused's house. After calling Sanjiv, they would discard the SIM and use another. The police are yet to ascertain if the SIMs were issued on valid ID proofs.

Dhoke said, "The extortionists were supposed to get the money from Sanjiv on Friday night. They were to call him around 10pm to ask him to bring money in a bag at Rahon Road at midnight, but before that the police nabbed them."