Delhi Police today claimed to
have solved several extortion cases in the city with the arrest of a man who, apparently influenced by crime serials on television, allegedly used to send threatening letters by courier to businessmen to extort money from them.
The Crime Branch of Delhi Police yesterday arrested Ashok Suri alias Bobby, who had allegedly sent out threatening letters to some prominent businessmen as well as a doctor in the national capital region and had demanded from them lakhs of rupees.
Suri had created enormous panic due to indulging in series of extortion bids, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said.
The Northern Range of Crime Branch was entrusted with the matter due to the gravity of the series of extortion threats and the agency had incorporated "technical surveillance and local information" to trace out the source of the threatening letters, the ACP said.
On November 23, after an information that a person was roaming around in suspicious circumstances in Gujranwala Town area of Model Town here, police laid a trap and apprehended Suri, ACP Yadav said.
During interrogation, it was found that Suri used to run an electrical goods shop in Basai Darapur area here, but had suffered losses.
During questioning, he said he got the idea of minting money through extortion bids from various crime serials he had watched on TV and had even sent out a threatening letter back in 2007, but after that had kept quite for some years before "starting afresh" in September 2013, the officer said.
