A Bengaluru man has been arrested by the Mumbai police for allegedly trying to threaten a builder from Mumbai and extort Rs 2 crore from him. The police team reached Bengaluru on Wednesday, January 14, after the builder filed a complaint against the 35-year-old Bengaluru man.
The accused, who has been identified as Mahesh Sanjeev Pujari, had allegedly made threats to the Mumbai builder in May 2021, and had demanded Rs 2 crore from him.
"Pujari had called the builder through a mobile phone app in May 2021, which showed that the call was made from an international number. He demanded Rs 2 crore from the builder and threatened to kill him," the official said.
The builder had received calls from the accused repeatedly and he registered a complaint with the police. Following this, a case of extortion had been registered against the accused in December 2021, the official said.
"As the accused was using a calling app to threaten, the Anti-Extortion Cell of the Mumbai police also began probing the case," the official said.
The police took technical help from the cyber cell, which found that the accused is located in Bengaluru. With this information, a team of police personnel from Malad station was sent to Bengaluru, where it arrested and took Pujari into custody, the official added.
Pujari was taken into custody from Karnataka by a team of police from the Malad police station in Mumbai on Wednesday, January 12 and was taken to Mumbai on Thursday, January 13, the official said.
"The accused has been arrested. Although he does not do any job, he is technically sound and has knowledge of computers," said Dhananjay Ligade, senior inspector of Malad police station. Pujari was produced before a court, which remanded him till January 17, he said.