New Delhi: Police in Delhi on Thursday claimed to have busted a honey trap racket which targets the rich and vulnerable in Delhi’s Rohini and arrested three men posing as cops, officials said.
Official sources said that the culprits behind this ‘honey trap’ racket were three notorious extortionists who had been posing as Delhi Police officers, tricking their victims into parting with hefty sums of money.
The breakthrough came when the Special Staff of Rohini District Police received a tip-off about a group of individuals using fake police uniforms to trap and blackmail unsuspecting victims. Acting on this intelligence, the police laid a well-coordinated trap near Vijay Vihar in Rohini.
Under the guidance of Vishnu Kumar Sharma, the Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (ADCP) of Rohini district, the police were able to apprehend the three culprits – Neeraj (36), Yogesh alias Dhilu (40), and Ashish (35), all residents of Haryana’s Bahadurgarh. The officer stated that they are not highly educated, with all of them having only completed up to 10th or 11th grade.
“These criminals operated with a high level of deception,” Addl DCP Vishnu Kumar Sharma told the media.
“They would first target wealthy individuals in the age group of 50 to 60 through social media, establishing trust and building a rapport. Once they had their victims in their clutches, they would lure them to a predetermined location, where they would pose as police officers and accuse the victims of illicit behaviour. Using the threat of fabricated charges and humiliating evidence, such as obscene photos, they would blackmail their targets for large sums of money,” added Sharma.
The modus operandi was that after creating a false connection with their victims, the accused would ambush them, wearing police uniforms and brandishing fake Delhi Police ID cards.