Surat: Three persons, including a woman, have been booked by Utran police for allegedly attempting to extort Rs 70 lakh from a man by threatening to make public a video of him in a compromising situation and implicating him in a rape case.The accused collected Rs 2.60 lakh from the man before demanding more money.According to police, the victim was employed by three partners to collect rent from tenants occupying their rooms. On Aug 17, the victim told his son that he was having suicidal thoughts. When his son asked him the reason, the man narrated the incident that had allegedly begun in Oct 2024.The victim said that when he had gone to collect rent from a room in Sattadhar Society, the woman tenant asked him to sit inside. While he was waiting for the rent, she allegedly stripped naked. The victim said he tried to leave the room, but soon a man identified as Prakash arrived and accused him of molesting his wife.Prakash assaulted the victim and forced him to strip at knifepoint. He then allegedly recorded a video showing the victim and the woman in a compromising situation. The two subsequently threatened to circulate the video and initially demanded Rs 7 lakh. Fearing that the video would be made public, the victim paid Rs 2.60 lakh in multiple transactions. The woman, however, continued to withhold the rent.In early Aug, the woman submitted a rape complaint application to the police and demanded Rs 70 lakh from the victim. She, along with her lawyer and aide Vasant Chavda, threatened the victim and his son and pressured them to compromise.The accused later allegedly demanded Rs 42 lakh to settle the matter and prevent registration of an FIR. The victim’s son and his friends recorded audio and video of the alleged extortion attempts and submitted the evidence to Utran police, following which a complaint of extortion and criminal intimidation was registered.
