The Delhi Police Special Cell has busted an inter-State extortion racket of conmen who cheated businessmen by sending them forged summons of Enforcement Directorate (ED).
A Special Cell team working on a case registered at Tughlaq Road police station in September, arrested the members of the gang, including its alleged kingpin Alex Joseph who was earlier arrested by the ED, CBI and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in cases of importing around 500 luxury cars from Dubai as second hand vehicles and evading import duty over Rs 200 crore, said Sanjeev Yadav, DCP (Special Cell).
Also, police teams recovered incriminating materials from the accused including fake summons of ED. Kolkata based businessmen Sanjay Surekha and Mahavir Aggarwal had received summons from the ED asking them to join investigations in alleged money laundering complaints against their companies. But, as they approached ED office in Delhi they found no such summons were issued by the directorate.
Following this Director of ED Karnal Singh registered a complaint at Tuglak Road police station on September 2 and a case was registered which was later transferred to Special Cell, said the officer.
The Special Cell identified the members of the syndicate who were scattered all across the country and various teams were formed to nab them.
Two accused Kalyan Shukla and Gaurav Pradhan were nabbed from Kolkata. Both had tried to extort Rs 5 crore from Sanjay Surekha by assuring him that they would get settled ED matter. They had met Sanjay in Kolkata to negotiate a deal but the businessman suspected them and reported the matter to ED, he said.
Another accused Dinesh Nagpal was arrested from his residence at Pandara Road, New Delhi. Kingpin of the gang Alex Joseph and Sanjay Paswan were also arrested from Delhi.
A raid in Mumbai led to arrest of Rakesh Kundra. Accused Rajesh Nair was arrested from Delhi on October 14 who led to two more arrests of accused Ericsson Massey and Mohammad Tariq were arrested from the city two days later. The tenth accused Javed Khan was arrested from Jamia Nagar here on October 19, he said.
During thorough interrogation, it was revealed that Kalyan Shukla and Gaurav Pradhan provided details of both the businessmen of Kolkata to Dinesh Nagpal. This information was passed on to Rakesh Kundra who further passed it to Alex Joseph.
Alex Joseph gave a sample summon of ED to Rajesh Nair and asked him to arrange matching fake summons and seals of ED.
Nair handed over this job to Ericsson Massey who with the help of his partner Mohammad Tariq prepared the fake summons at their cyber-cafe in Khirki Extension.
The fake seals of ED were procured by duo from Mewat in Harayana.
Accused Alex is the brain behind the conspiracy to extort money from businessmen by putting them fear of implicating in cases of money laundering in ED, said the officer.