A younger lawyer, her husband, and a balloon vendor have been arrested on Thursday for allegedly working a racket that framed males entangled in marital disputes in false rape instances to extort cash from them, Gurugram police mentioned on Friday.
The accused have been recognized as Geetika Chawla, 26, a lawyer practising on the Gurugram civil courts, her husband Harsh Kumar Thakkar, 29, and Hanuman, 35, also called Rohit, who bought balloons on metropolis footpaths. Police mentioned the trio allegedly extorted ₹1.14 crore in money, together with gold ornaments, cash price round ₹2.85 crore, from their victims.
Throughout a 16-hour search of their flat in Tata Primanti, an upscale advanced in Sector 72, police additionally recovered 10 cell phones and 11 SIM playing cards allegedly used to make extortion calls , laptops, a number of passports and Aadhaar playing cards. Police mentioned Chawla’s prime targets have been the husbands of her purchasers who approached her for looking for authorized assist in type of alimony and upkeep.
The racket was busted after Hanuman, posing as Rohit Kumar utilizing a cast Aadhaar card, lodged an FIR at Sector 65 police station on October 29, alleging that his minor son, who bought balloons with him, had been kidnapped and raped by a automobile proprietor who handed by the route the place he bought balloons.
Deputy commissioner of police (south) Hitesh Yadav mentioned the person named within the grievance was a Gurugram-based IT agency proprietor had briefly travelled on the route talked about within the FIR whereas visiting his dad and mom. “We discovered that the complainant’s quantity had been used earlier in an extortion grievance. That raised doubts,” Yadav mentioned.
Investigators referred to as Rohit Kumar for verification and found that the {photograph} on the Aadhaar card used within the FIR didn’t match the one he later submitted because it was a cast one offered to him by Chawla. “After sustained questioning and counselling of the kid, it emerged that Hanuman had filed the grievance on the instructions of a lawyer and her husband. His particulars, when fed in a central repository of the crime database, revealed that he was an accused in a theft case registered in Gurugram in 2011,” Yadav mentioned.
When Chawla and Thakkar have been questioned, she admitted to representing the IT skilled’s spouse in an ongoing marital case. Police mentioned the couple had plotted to border him in a false rape case to drive a monetary settlement for the spouse.
The investigation revealed that this was not an remoted incident. In Could 2024, Chawla allegedly persuaded one other consumer, additionally locked in a dispute together with her husband, to accuse him of sexually assaulting their minor daughter. That case, registered on the Girls’s Police Station (West), was later discovered to be false.
In June this yr, Hanuman’s spouse filed an identical rape case in Faridabad in opposition to one other man, additionally at Chawla’s behest. Police mentioned each complaints mirrored the identical sample and have been in the end declared false.
“The small print have been strikingly just like the current Sector 65 FIR that uncovered the nexus,” a senior investigator mentioned. “Cops who dealt with the 2 earlier instances had no concept then that these have been linked or half of a bigger extortion racket.”
DCP Yadav mentioned a number of males concerned in authorized disputes with their wives had reported receiving extortion calls over the previous yr. “We examined data of over 30 cell phones and 100 numbers. Many have been linked to Chawla’s units,” he mentioned.
Police consider at the least two dozen males could have been focused by the group. “We suspect the seized gold and money are proceeds from these extortions,” an officer mentioned.
Yadav added {that a} dozen extra individuals linked to the couple are underneath investigation for serving to establish targets and submitting fabricated complaints.
A particular investigation group led by ACP (Badshahpur) Surender Phogat has been shaped to probe the case. Police mentioned knowledge recovered from Chawla’s laptop computer included the draft of the FIR filed by Hanuman at Sector 65 police station.
Investigators mentioned Chawla, who earned her regulation diploma from a college in Meerut in 2022, usually made Hanuman write complaints in his personal handwriting to keep away from arousing suspicion.
Hanuman, a balloon vendor from Ajmer, is at the moment on a five-day police remand. It was Thakkar who had discovered him close to Bhuteshwar temple in Sector-11 in 2022 and stored him in loop to use his monetary situation. Chawla and Thakkar have been remanded in police custody for seven days to find out what number of pretend instances have been filed and the way a lot cash was extorted.
“The extent of the racket remains to be being uncovered,” mentioned DCP Yadav. “We’re tracing different people and victims linked to their community.”
