Private eye, actor wife held for extorting from tainted babu

THANE: Turning the tables on his alleged extortionist using his own methods, controversial IAS officer Radheshyam Mopalwar got a private detective from Dombivli and his Marathi actress wife arrested on charges of blackmail and extortion early on Friday. He shot a video of the accused as he negotiated with them to bring down the exortion amount and approached Thane police.

The accused, Satish and Shraddha Mangle, had packed their bags and were about to leave for Sri Lanka, when sleuths of the anti-extortion cell nabbed them while allegedly accepting Rs 1 crore of the Rs 7 crore they had demanded from Mopalwar, said Param Bir Singh, Thane police commissioner. Singh claimed that Shraddha, who is Mangle's second wife, had aided him in the extortion racket.

On August1, Mangle had released an audio tape in which Mopalwar, then Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation chief, is allegedly heard negotiating a Rs 4-crore deal with a middleman for allocation of a 15,000 sq ft plot in Borivli to one Jal Mehta, to several news channels. Subsequently , the chief minister sent Mopalwar on leave pending inquiry .

Singh said, “The audio clip is suspected to be doctored as several audio recordings have been found in Mangle's laptops along with editing software as well as technical equipments.“

Police seized two laptops, five cellphones, four pen drives, 15 CDs and several `incriminating' documents from the couple's rented flat in Palava city at Nilje village, Dombivli. “We have roped in a team of technical experts to go through the material,“ said a police officer.

Explaining the modus operandi, Singh said Mangle would get close to senior government officials and record conversations with them. It has been learnt that Mangle has seven email accounts where he would save the recorded conversations with his `victims'.Police also found that Mangle had paid Rs 2 lakh to translate the recordings from English to Marathi. “We are also verifying if he had spent Rs 20-Rs 25 lakh to arrange a demonstration against Mopalwar after the controversy broke out,“ said a police officer.

Mangle had come in contact with Mopalwar last year through a deputy superintendent of police. The private detective reportedly mediated in Mopalwar's divorce and later started extorting money from the IAS officer as well as his former wife, said sources.

On October 23, Mangle, Shraddha and their friend Anil Vedmehta asked Mopalwar's friend Kling Mishra to tell him to come to Kharegaon toll naka on the Mumbai-Nashik highway. There, Mangle allegedly demanded Rs 10 crore in exchange for all the `incriminating' audio tapes. Singh said a few days later, the couple called Mopalwar to a resort at Wadpe, near Bhiwandi, and reiterated the demand. Then on October 31, they met Mopalwar in a luxury hotel in Juhu between 8pm and 9pm. During the one-hour discussion, Mopalwar negotiated with the couple and brought the amount down to Rs 7 crore. Mopalwar recorded the conversation on his cellphone and submitted the video clip to Thane police. “The couple also threatened to take the help of gangsters to bump off Mopal war and his daughter that if failed to pay the money. They also warned him against filing a police complaint,“ Singh said.

A class 10 dropout, Mangle even dropped out of diploma in computer management and started working as a private detective. In 2012, Bandra police filed an extortion case against him. Mangle also has several criminal cases related to illegally procured call records and phone tapping against him.