The police arrested a Bokaro-based CCl employee for allegedly trying to extort `10 lakh as ‘rangdaari’ from a city-based businessman in the name of dreaded CPI Maoist leader Kundan Pahan.
The police arrested the CCl employee, Preetram Ajay, from his residence in Bokaro on tracks received from the cell-phone by which he, along with his another associate Arun Ram had made calls to the businessman.
In this connection, the businessman Shiv Kumar Chowdhury who is a resident of Circuit House Area in Bistupur had on December 25 lodged an FIR against unknown. In the FIR, the victim mentioned the cell-phone number from which he was getting extortion calls and on the basis of the mobile number police succeeded to reach up to Ajay.
Police officials informed that another accused, Arun Ram, who is posted at the CCl's Geological Department at its headquarters at Ranchi managed to run away arrest, but the police recovered `64,000 cash during a raid last night. Beside the cash, the police have also seized an SUV, three cell-phones, bank pass-books of both the accused during the raids at the house of the accused at Bokaro and Ranchi. Ajay (32) was posted as grade II clerk at CCl’s Jarangdih colliery in Bokaro.
Addressing the media about the breakthrough, senior SP, Anoop T Mathew said that the victim Shiv Kumar Chowdhury who has an industrial unit at Adityapur industrial area had been getting extortion calls from a mobile number.
“It is big achievement for our team. The businessman was being threatened the latter had no way than to lodge an FIR with the Bistupur police station against the caller, mentioning the cell-phone number from which the calls were made. We had subsequently put the number of the said cell-phone on the tracking in our technical cell. About five days of tracking of the said number we reached at the whereabouts of Preetam Ajay and nabbed him,” said Mathew.
The senior SP said that during probe, they came to know that both Ajay and Arun used to call the leading businessmen for extortion of money in the name of the dreaded CPI-Maoist leader Kundan Pahan and extort money. He said apart from the businessmen, the two accused would also target the senior executives of CCl also.
According to the senior SP, the two accused would make calls to the businessmen and company executives and would say that they are in jungles of Ramgarh or Khunti or any other rebel-infested district and are in need of money urgently.
It may be mentioned here Kundan Pahan is a zonal commander of the banned outfit CPI-Maoist and is considered to be a terror in several parts of Jharkhand.