Five charged for stripping, blackmailing shop owners
PHOTO: FILE
Five suspects have been booked for their alleged involvement in blackmailing two shop owners and extorting money from them, which also includes a person posing as a fake police employee.
The incident came to light when a resident of Garden Mohalla, Nishatabad, Muhammad Mehmood, reported the harrowing experience to the police.
In his complaint registered with the police, Mehmood said he received a call from an unidentified woman who claimed to have a patient in need of surgical supplies from his surgical business in Akbarabad Chowk.
Unknowingly falling into a trap, he was asked to meet a group of individuals near the Jhal underpass. Upon arriving, Mehmood was held at gunpoint, stripped naked, and forced to endure humiliating photos and videos taken by the perpetrators on their cell phones.
They then extorted Rs40,000 and a an expensive cellphone from him, threatening to make the explicit content public if he took any legal action.
In another incident, a person identified as Malik Rafiq, alias Rafiqa, claimed to be a police employee and demanded Rs15,000 in extortion from Shehbaz Butt's shop in the Pakistani Chowk area of Ghulam Muhammad Abad. This marked the latest attempt in a series of extortion attempts totaling Rs150,000 in the past.
The People's Colony police and Ghulam Muhammad Abad Police have registered cases against the accused under various provisions and initiated efforts to apprehend them.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 3rd, 2023.