Tailor nabbed for blackmailing girl

MUMBAI: A tailor who threatened to upload obscene pictures and videos of a 23-year-old girl, who is from Gujarat and studies in Mumbai, unless her father paid up Rs 1.8 crore, has been nabbed by the police.
Last August, the girl lost her purse on a train at Andheri. Within a month, she received an anonymous letter at her aunt’s home in Oshiwara. It stated that its writer, the tailor, who is aged 52 years, had pictures and videos of her in “compromising positions”.
“Her family approached us. We studied the letter and thought it must be from a close relative or an ex-boyfriend,” said DCP (enforcement) Praveen Patil. “The family received one letter after another. In one of them, the tailor even sought a reply, directing the letter to be kept at a particular location.”
The tailor didn’t pick up the first few replies. But in December, he picked up one in which the girl’s and a relative’s cell number was mentioned. He started calling the girl on her cell phone from various PCOs. The girl told him she was not rich and convinced him to talk to her “uncle”, police inspector Sudhakar Deshmukh.
The tailor started calling up Deshmukh and after much haggling brought down the amount to Rs 4 lakh. On Tuesday, when he arrived to accept the money at the designated place, a police team, which had laid a trap, nabbed him. The police said the tailor, Nayan Jadhav, a resident of Navsari, Gujarat, found the girl’s purse, which contained her photos and PAN card.