A Noida based digital news channel head, Afsar Ali alias A K Chaudhry has been arrested by the Delhi police and charged with extortion and blackmailing. An FIR under IPC Section 384 (extortion) has been registered against the Noida based fraud journalist.
Afsar Ali was running a digital channel Jansatya and news office-cum-studio Global News Media Pvt. Ltd at Film city, Noida. A case u/s 384/34 IPC has been registered at the Greater Kailash police station against the ‘journalist’ for allegedly attempting to extort Rs 5 crore from a South Delhi-based advocate by threatening to upload a sting operation that was conducted on him, police said on Friday.
The fraud journalist has previously been involved in three crimes, including vehicle theft and cheating, and an FIR has been registered against him in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh between 2010 and 2015, Delhi police informed.
The Noida based fraud ‘journalist’ selected his targets based on their lifestyle
DCP (South) Atul Thakur said that the alleged journalist had been recording videos of people and later demanding money for not airing it on his online news portal.
The case came to the fore after an advocate approached the police alleging that he had been receiving extortion calls. The advocate, who’s name has been withheld by the Delhi police, complained that the Jansatya ‘journalist’ was threatening to defame him by uploading a sting operation conducted against him on their news portal if he did not pay them Rs 5 crore, said Thakur.
The accused in connivance with a team of small-time photographers and aspiring job seekers identified his prospective targets based on their lifestyles and then conducted sting operations on them. Based on the victim’s potential he then demands money to settle the matter.
“After carefully picking wealthy targets, they would pose as buyers of big farmhouse land and conduct sting operations on one pretext or another and then hope that the victims will settle minor disputes and legal hassles. In the entire process which could continue for months, videos were made and the ‘accused’ was called for his version,” said Atul Thakur, DCP South Delhi.
The Delhi police are now verifying details to ascertain if there were other such victims against whom this fraud had adopted same modus operandi to extort money.
