You often see massage therapists get a bad rep for suspected shady dealings to the extent of solicitation. However, many a time, medical professionals recommend massages as a part of physical therapy for patients. When a senior citizen who happens to be a filmmaker’s father opted for massage therapy recently; he didn’t sign on for blackmail, extortion. But that is precisely what he got.
In a shocking case of extortion a gang allegedly made a false porn clip of him and blackmailed the 68-year-old. They asked him to cough up Rs 25 crore if he sought to protect his “integrity.”
It all began soon after a physician recommended that Dhanraj Sindhi see a massage therapist, to ease his aches and pain. That was when his son, Anil was contacted by a woman named Lucky Misha who proposed massage sessions. Conducted October through December 2018, the sessions were uneventful.
However, a certain ‘Rahul Shukla’ contacted Dhanraj soon after stating that he worked for YouTube. Shukla stated that he was in possession of a porn clip of the senior citizen. He further threatened to make them public if he wasn’t paid Rs 25 crore.
“When my father denied being part of any such act, the caller disconnected the line,” Anil revealed to the cops in his police complaint.
“Later, I got a call from a friend, who said five persons had made calls to him, telling him that they had video clippings of my father in compromising situations, which they would release on their online portal if I failed to fulfil their extortion demands.”
Soon, the extortion gang faced arrest when they fell for a trap set by the additional commissioner of police Manoj Sharma of Amboli police and his team.
“Anil met the gang at least five times and even quarreled with them after watching one of the video clips. He told the gang it was not his father on the clip and that the sequences were morphed. Unknown to the gang, Anil recorded the conversation,” said an officer.
The cops advised Anil to meet them at CCD, Lokhandwala with Rs 5 lakh (the first instalment) since the gang settled for Rs 12 crore to be paid in instalments.
The cops identified the five arrested as Hussain Makarani (the ring leader), Lucky Mishra (the lady), Yuvraj Chavan, Rehman Shaikh, and Keval Ramkumar. TOI reports that the gang has been booked under IPC for extortion, the IT Act’s section 67A for electronically transmitting material containing sexually explicit content.
Fortuitously, many are now choosing to stand up to their blackmailers just like Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos did recently. Let’s hope the future heralds the end of fear from stigma and other societal pressures!