Published Aug 02, 2023 | 7:57 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 02, 2023 | 7:57 PM
A police patrol in Bengaluru became suspicious as a cab driver and his friends were having expensive whisky. (iStock)
An expensive bottle of single-malt whisky led the police to an unreported crime in Bengaluru and helped a woman get back 960 gm of gold an alleged extortionist had taken from her.
It all began when a patrol team under Sub-Inspector (SI) Mounesh of the Ramamurthy Nagar police station came across a parked cab with a few men inside around 12.30 am on 24 July. On checking, the police team found that three men were having a party.
The patrol party questioned the men over consuming alcohol on a public road. However, officer Mounesh found something odd: The men were having Glenlivet whisky, an expensive brand of Scotch that would cost about ₹9,900 a bottle in Bengaluru.
The SI felt that the bottle was too expensive for the men to afford. He took them to the police station for questioning.
During interrogation, the police learnt that the cabbie, Kiran Kumar, 34, had procured the liquor to party with his two friends.
It did not take much longer for Kumar, already on a high, to blurt out the truth.
He told the police that he had blackmailed a woman into paying him ₹20 lakh and 960 gm of gold worth ₹40 lakh over five months from November last year.
The woman had hired Kumar’s car, attached to a cab aggregator, in November 2022. While riding the cab, she poured out her woes — specifically her planned divorce — to a male friend over the phone. Unknown to the woman, the driver, too, was all ears, and learnt all the details.
Later, the driver found the woman and her husband’s profile on social media. He then rang up the woman saying he was an acquaintance of her male friend and claimed to know her personal life in detail.
He threatened that he would explain everything to her husband and started blackmailing the woman, a senior police officer told South First.
The woman, a homemaker, was already undergoing treatment for depression. To protect her and her husband’s reputation, she offered to pay Kumar ₹20 lakh.
Despite getting the money, the cabbie kept on threatening her. The woman borrowed gold ornaments weighing 960 gm from her mother and grandmother, and handed them to the alleged extortionist.
The police said Kumar pawned the gold at different branches of a private financial corporation. The pawned gold has been recovered, but he lost the ₹20 lakh to online betting.
The police contacted the woman and convinced her to complain.
“Kiran Kumar was arrested on 28 July after which he was taken by the police team to recover the gold jewellery from the Muthoot Gold Finance outlets,” a senior police officer told South First.
The police, however, were helpless in recovering the ₹20 lakh.
“This was an exceptional case. Inspector Rangaswamy and SI Mounesh did their best to help the woman in distress by bringing the accused driver to book. The police managed to recover the gold jewellery worth ₹40 lakh. If he was not arrested now, he would have become emboldened and expanded his criminal activities,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) Bheemashankar Guled told South First.
