Bengaluru: The police have arrested three students on the charges of stealing another student’s cellphone, extracting the memory chip, and blackmailing him and his girlfriend with photographs stored in the handset.
According to the police, the students, all in their early 20s, allegedly stole the phone at a restaurant in Electronic City on October 4. They extracted the memory chip and sold the phone to a dealer. After a month, when they checked the memory card, they stumbled upon photographs of the boy and videos of the couple.
The students contacted the couple and threatened to upload the images on social media if they did not give them Rs. 1 lakh.
The owner of the cellphone, who had already filed a case with the police, approached the police. Investigators asked the cellphone owner to negotiate and bring down the ransom amount to Rs. 50,000.
After finalising the deal, a team of plain-clothes policemen used the information to track down the accused. They found that they all lived in the same neighbourhood on Hosur Road near Parappana Agrahara.
On Saturday, the day of the exchange, the police surrounded the neighbourhood and caught the trio red-handed. The students have been booked for blackmail, criminal intimidation among other charges and remanded to judicial custody.
