Bogus film agent held for extortion

pune: crime branch sleuths have arrested a man who tried to extort money from a video parlour-owner by threatening to lodge a police complaint against in him for violation of the copyright act. in a press release issued by the city police's anti-extortion cell, one rais inamdar (38), approached prakash bhagat, owner of the kalyani video-music library navi peth on monday morning, and posed as an authorised agent of a film distribution firm t.p.i.co. he alleged that bhagat stocked pirated video cassettes of the hindi films nayak and love ke liye kuch bhi karega. inamdar asked him to keep rs 70,000 by evening in order to avoid police action, bhagat alleged. bhagat, however, later remembered that inamdar had accompanied the police during an official raid on the city's video parlours two months ago. he contacted other parlour-owners to discover inamdar had made similar demands from them too. mr bhagat thereafter lodged a complaint with the crime branch which set a trap at mr bhagat's. inamdar and his two accomplices nijam sheikh (19) resident of kurla, mumbai and ashok chavan (30) resident of janwadi, pune, walked straight into the trap. all the three accused were remanded to police custody till september 20.