Detectives yesterday arrested six members of a gang, including two women, who used to blackmail people – top government officials, political leaders, industrialists, businessmen and expatriates – to extort money from them.
The gang used to impersonate policemen and journalists while a young girl named Dola Akhter, 20, would flirt with the target.
A team of Detective Branch of police led by Additional Deputy Commissioner Sanwar Hossain detained Dola, ring leader Abu Taleb, 68, Azahar Uddin Khan, 42, Mohammad Mostofa, 40, Shamim Sikder, 25, and Salma Begum, 45, from the capital’s Madhya Paikpara.
They also recovered a wireless set, a pair of handcuffs and a digital camera from their possession.
Metropolitan Magistrate Mahabubur Rahman later placed the six on eight-day remand in connection with two cases filed with Mirpur police station. DB Sub-Inspector Abul Bashar had produced them before the court, seeking 20 days for interrogating them.
Earlier, acting on a tip-off, a special team of DB raided a house at Paikpara under Mirpur police station at about 4:30pm and arrested the six gang members.
DB Additional Deputy Commissioner Sanwar Hossain said Dola would play as a girlfriend with influential people, thus trapping them and then blackmailing them.
He said: “She would secretly take pictures of herself in compromising situations with the target person and also make love with them in a particular room where Taleb, Azahar and Mostofa would appear impersonating policemen.”
The DB official said the impersonators would frighten them with arrest and demand a large amount of money to keep quiet. Shamim would also emerge as a journalist and continue blackmailing the victim.
At a press briefing at the Dhaka Metropolitan Police media centre, the DB officials said the gang had taken Tk24 lakh from a Bangladeshi expatriate living in London on August 26 last year, Tk17 lakh from a high-ranking government official on February 20 this year and Tk5 lakh from a veteran politician this month.
The detectives expressed hope to arrest the other gang members shortly.
