Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh): The Jabalpur police claimed to have busted a gang of blackmailers. The gang members entered the houses of different people posing as journalists and made videos of their homes to blackmail them. They exploited couples. Though they have been operating for a long time, their activities came to light after the police busted a an alleged sex racket in Anjani Vihar colony under Madan Mahal police station five days ago.
The police arrested Santosh Jain, JP Singh, Pankaj Gupta, Vivek Mishra and Arpit Thakur in connection with the racket. Nearly five members of the gang are still at large, the police said. The police have received many complaints after the arrest of the gang members.
On July 25, a few residents of Anjani Vihar Colony caught two women and brought them to the police station for allegedly running a sex racket. During this period, a worker of Bajrang Dal Arpit Thakur and a few alleged fake journalists were present on the spot. On the grounds of the residents’ complaints, the police took the two women into their custody.
During questioning the women alleged that Thakur and a few self-styled journalists had entered their room, made their videos and threatened to make those videos viral on social media. The woman also alleged that those self-styled journalists had demanded Rs 100,000 from them.
As the police began to probe into the complaints of the women, they came to know that those people had entered their room and made videos, besides beating their male friends. The police said that they came to know that Santosh Jain, JP Singh, Pankaj Gupta, Vivek Mishra, Ravi Ben and others have been blackmailing people for a long time.
These people roam around different places and collect information about people’s personal life and make their videos. After this, the gang members start blackmailing those people. In 2018, the gang blackmailed the then sub-divisional manager of the area as well as Tehsildar and took lakhs of rupees from them.
As the issue was related to the administrative officials, the police did not inquire into the matter. The gangs are also active in various hotels and in villages. They occasionally pose themselves as administrative officers, people’s representatives and as liquor barons.
