AGRA: Two Agra police constables and three others, including a woman, were arrested by Tajganj police on Friday for allegedly extorting money from builders and businessmen after luring them into a honey trap.Police said before being caught the gang had targeted at least three confirmed victims who were engaged in either real estate or some other business. Three FIRs have been lodged against the gang.The two constables — Deepak Solanki, posted with Sadar police station, and Kavi, attached with Agra police line — were booked under IPC sections 384 (extortion), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 342 (wrongful confinement), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation). Other members of the gang, Ashish Sharma , 26, a resident of Indrapuram, who claimed to be the mastermind, was arrested along with his accomplices, Gaurav Soleman, 25, and a 28-year-old woman, who is also the mother of two teenage daughters.All the five were picked up from Kahari area under the jurisdiction of Ekta police outpost late on Thursday night, after local residents found a semi-naked real estate developer crying for help from a rented accommodation of the accused woman.Speaking with TOI, Tajganj station house officer Vinod Kumar Payal said, “We were receiving inputs about a gang that included policemen which was extorting money from businessmen by luring them into a honey trap. On Thursday, with the help of public, we managed to bust the racket.”Payal said, “During interrogation of the accused, we found that the woman used to befriend businessmen on Facebook or over the phone, and lure them for having sex at her rented accommodation. Explicit pictures of the act would be clicked. Then, with the help of her paramour Sharma, who is the gang leader, they would extort money from the victims by threatening to upload the pictures online. In the crime, the two police constables would threaten the victim that he would be sent to jail if he did not pay the extortion amount.”In the present case, the gang had demanded Rs 10 lakh from the real estate developer and was physically torturing him to create pressure on him to pay up. Unable to bear the torture, the victim screamed for help, alerting the neighbours who called police, the SHO added.According to police, the accused woman’s husband left her seven years ago. She then came in contact with Sharma, an MBA pass-out who had served a jail term for forgery and vehicle-lifting.During interrogation, Sharma said he had lost Rs 2.5 crore in scrap business after local police raided his godown and three shops in Chippitola in 2017 and seized 250 motorcycles which were allegedly stolen. To recover his losses, Sharma in connivance with his paramour and accomplice started extorting money from local businessmen by blackmailing them.

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