Teens pick up extortion tricks from popular TV show Crime Patrol

Mumbai Crime branch arrested two teenagers, who allegedly hatched a plan to extort money from a building material exporter from Ghatkopar, after watching the popular television show

The Mumbai Crime branch arrested two teenagers, who allegedly hatched a plan to extort money from a building material exporter from Ghatkopar. According to the police, the two would watch the crime reality show, Crime Patrol, and keeping with the show, planned the whole crime. Santosh Prakash Khanvilkar and Sushant Shantaram Bait, both 18 years old, planned this as Santosh’s father needed a operation would worth Rs 7 lakh.

DCP Kulkarni and Sr PI Vast showing pictures of photos seized from accused Santosh Khanvilkar

“To raise money, Prakash started a canteen at his Ghatkopar West home. The complainant’s driver would visit the canteen and told Prakash that there had been a CBI raid at his employer’s house,” said Atul Chandra Kulkarni, joint commissioner of police, Mumbai Crime branch. Prakash’s son Santosh overheard this, managed to get the builder’s number, and started sending extortion messages to the complainant. “The complainant started getting messages asking him to pay Rs 2 crore.

Santosh said he’d inform the CBI that the complainant had lots of money. He even sent a pen drive to the complainant’s address, with photos of the complainant picked up from Facebook, and a photo of a CD that he claimed had details of the complainant’s black business,” said Dhanajay Kulkarni, deputy commissioner of police, crime branch.

The complainant approached the Parksite police (Vikhroli). Initially, the two accused proved to be difficult to nab, having picked up tricks from Crime Patrol. They would switch on their phones only while sending messages. The police also found that the SIM card was registered in a person’s name who lived in Shivadi, a village in Nashik. The two boys said they had noted these details from the show. It was only when police asked the complainant to send messages to the accused and convince them to meet him, that they could nab him.

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