Bhawanipatna: A 24-year-old youth has been arrested in Odisha’s Kalahandi district for allegedly attempting to extort Rs 35 lakh from his father by sending a threatening letter falsely attributed to Maoists.
According to sources, Dinesh Agarwal, a local contractor and a resident of Rupra Road, found the extortion letter in his car on October 7, in which Maoists had threatened to eliminate his entire family if he failed to cough up Rs 35 lakh. To build up pressure and ensure that the plan worked, he sent a similar threatening letter to his father’s business partner.
Terrified, the family approached Narla police the same evening.
In the course of investigation, police questioned family members of the contractor, including his son Ankush. The content and manner in which the letter was drafted also raised questions in the mind of police. “The letter was in Hindi. The contents appeared haphazard and there were personal references which indicated involvement of someone very close to them. We got a tip-off from a person to whom the boy had confided about the plan,” a senior police officer told mediapersons.
Ankush was arrested on Tuesday and remanded to judicial custody.
Further investigation is underway to identify potential accomplices, police said.