A Delhi-based YouTuber couple was arrested for allegedly extorting more than Rs 80 lakh from a businessman after honey-trapping him and threatening to implicate him in a false rape case, the police informed.
The victim is the owner of an advertising agency and filed a complaint against the couple in August. However, the couple applied to the court for interim bail. Their interim bail was recently dismissed, and after that, an FIR was filed against them at Sector 50 police station earlier this week.
According to the victim, a resident of Gurugram’s Badshahpur, he came in contact with a woman named Namra Qadir, a resident of Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh. They met at Hotel Radisson on Sohna Road in Gurugram where they discussed making an advertisement for his company.
The complainant stated that during their meeting, a person named Virat alias Manish Beniwal accompanied Qadir. They asked Rs 2.50 for making the advertisement, and accordingly the complainant made the payment. After few days, she demanded Rs 50,000 more, and he transferred that amount to her account.
But when he asked her for the output of the job, she proposed to him for marriage instead, expressing her liking for him. According to the police, the businessman later became friends with the couple and spent nights with Namra Qadir and Virat. During this time, the couple began recording their private moments, which they used to blackmail the businessman.
The businessman said that in August this year, he along with Namra Qadir and Manish went to a club for partying, and booked a room there late at night. When he woke up in the morning, Virat alias Manish Beniwal asked him to hand over his bank cards and the iWatch he was wearing. Manish pointed a weapon at the man, saying that he is the husband of Qadir, and threatened that if he does not pay them money they will implicate him in a false rape case.
According to the complainant, Namra Qadir and Manish extorted more than Rs 80 lakh in cash and other expensive items from him using that threat. The matter came to light after he borrowed Rs5 lakh form his father to give to the couple. When he withdrew Rs5 lakh from his father’s bank account, his father asked why he needed the money. He didn’t hide the matter and narrated everything to his father. After that, his father took him to the police station to lodge a complaint.
The police said that they had served the couple with a notice on October 10, but they had applied for interim bail in Gurugram. The interim bail was rejected on November 18, after which an FIR was registered against them.
On Thursday, Sector 50 police station SHO Rajesh Kumar said that the youtube couple were booked under sections 388 (extortion by putting any person in fear), 328 (causing hurt by mean of poison), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 506 (criminal intimidation), 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). SHO Kumar informed that raids are being conducted and the accused will be arrested soon.
Second case in a week of vlogger couple blackmailing and extorting money
This is the second case of bloggers extorting people that has emerged in a week. Just a couple of days ago, a vlogger couple Nishad and Rashida were arrested in Kerala for extorting Rs 23 lakh from a 68-year-old businessman. The couple is active on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and Rashida the businessman on Facebook in July 2021. She began to chat with him on the social media platform. Soon they became friends, and she invited him to her apartment in Aluva. There, they became intimate, after she convinced him by saying that her husband knows everything and he has given consent for it. She had put up secret cameras with the help of her husband, and their acts were recorded on camera.
Using these visuals, the couple started to blackmail the businessman and extorted money from him. They extorted money from him in instalments, and the was forced to borrow money from others to pay them. But when his family members asked him about his changed behaviour and missing money, he eventually revealed everything. After that that his family members lodged a complaint with the police. By that time, the man had paid Rs 23 lakh to them. Nishad has been sent to jail, while Rashida was granted bail as she is the mother of two infants.
