Four persons, including two women, have been arrested for allegedly extorting around Rs 20 lakh from a Delhi-based doctor after threatening him to get him implicated in a false rape case, police said today.
The accused were identified as Sweta Panchal, Kuldeep Kaur, Pradeep and Manoj Solanki. It was Panchal who headed the gang, said a senior police official.
According to police, it was Kaur who allegedly targeted the doctor and developed good contacts with him.
On the evening of October 19, she sent a woman patient to the doctor's residence at Pitampura for medical consultancy. The patient, identified as Rukhsar, requested the doctor to escort her to a nearby bus stand as she felt a little unsafe there.
The doctor agreed and when they reached the bus stand, Panchal and her husband Pradeep allegedly forced the doctor inside their car and thrashed him, they said, adding that they also threatened him that they would frame rape charges against him.
The duo then took the doctor to the office of their associate Solanki, a property dealer at northwest Delhi's Karala, and started negotiating.
They allegedly demanded Rs 50 lakh, but later the matter was settled at Rs 30 lakh.
They also made the doctor to sign a note asking the woman to forgive him and threatened him that they could now use the note as evidence in the case.
"They managed to fleece Rs 19.50 lakh from the doctor and asked him to pay the balance amount within 10 days. The doctor was so depressed that at one point he thought of committing suicide," said DCP (West) Pushpendra Kumar.
He later approached the police and a case of hatching criminal conspiracy and charges was registered at Hari Nagar police station, said Kumar.
On Wednesday, the police asked the doctor to contact the accused on the pretext of handing them over the balance amount and laid a trap. Kaur and Solanki were arrested immediately. During interrogation, they spilled the beans and led police to Panchal and Pradeep.
However, their associates, Rukhsar and her husband Krishna alias Vijay, who later turned out to be an accomplice, were still at large, police added.
