A day after arresting house help of DCP Saurabh Tripathi in connection with angadia extortion case, the crime branch have claimed to have established money trail and how the alleged extortion money was sent to Lucknow through hawala channels.
According to the police, a middle man operating closely with the DCP has accepted taking money from arrested inspector Om Wangate and later transferred it to Lucknow, hometown of the DCP through an angadia (courier services) .
As per sources, middle man (name withheld) had accepted around ₹6.5 lakh from Wangate of which he had transferred ₹5 lakh to Lucknow which was accepted by Pappu Kumar Pyarelal Gaud, 27 house help of Tripathi's house in Lucknow where his parents live.
The investigators have also recovered diary entries made by the angadia about the transaction between the middleman and Gaud. The remaining ₹1.5 lakh were recovered from the middleman, both he and the angadia who transferred the money are likely to be made witnesses in the case, said officials.
Meanwhile, several teams of crime branch are still in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan in search of Tripathi who is a wanted accused in the case and has moved before the court for anticipatory bail, which the court to hear on Wednesday. Since the case was registered, Tripathi remained absent from the duty, his wife however informed the police that he was not keeping well.
So far the crime branch has arrested four persons including Gaud and Wangate while the two others are API Nitin Kadam and PSI samadhan Jamdade. All of them were attached to the L T Marg police station.
The offence of extortion was registered On February 18 on the allegations of angadia association which claimed that the DCP had demanded ₹10 lakh monthly to "allow" them to run their business. The association also alleged that few angadias were also detained by arrested officers on multiple occasions in December and ₹18 lakhs to ₹20 lakhs were extorted from them by threatening to book them or tip the Income Tax (IT) department about their illegal activities.
The association went to police commissioner who asked the additional commissioner of South region to investigate. Following the probe the offence was registered on the complaint of additional commissioner Dilip Sawant. DCP was made a wanted accused during the course of investigation.
