2 held over obscene videos & blackmailing

Lucknow, Aug 10 (IANS) The Lucknow police and the cyber cell team have arrested two men for allegedly extorting money from people by making their obscene videos.

The two arrested have been identified as Mohit Singh of Hamirpur and Vivek Singh of Banda district.

Police sources said that the accused used to identify the target and a girl would make a video call and indulge in obscene acts. The entire call would be recorded, the video of which was later used to blackmail the victim.

A similar case has come to light recently in Hazratganj in which the blackmailers had made an obscene video of a senior government official.

Mahanagar SHO Pradeep Kumar Singh said the name of the accused surfaced during the investigation of a case lodged at Mahanagar on June 22.

A businessman, in his complaint, had stated that he got a video call from a girl who indulged in an obscene act. While the victim disconnected the phone, a little later, a youth made a call to the victim to blackmail him. He was asked to pay Rs 30 crore if he wanted the video deleted.

The police said the victim, instead of giving money, lodged a case.

"The youths had applied the same trick on several people and had realized a huge sum of money. In some cases, victims did not lodge any complaint to avoid facing social disgrace," said the SHO, adding that the two were tracked down through electronic surveillance by the cyber cell on Monday.