Insta 'friend' leads teen to extortion gang

Chennai: A 17-year-old boy, who wrote his Class XII examinations recently, on Wednesday went to meet a ‘friend' he met through Instagram, only to be bundled into an autorickshaw by some gangsters who blackmailed him saying they would tell his family that he was stealing from them if he did not bring them 1 lakh cash and gold. They also threatened to harm his family if he approached police.

The boy, however, returned home and told his father about the threats, after which the family lodged a police complaint on Thursday. Police said that the teen, a resident of the Seven Wells area, had been conversing with another minor boy through Instagram for the past month.

On Wednesday, the other boy convinced the 17-year-old to meet in person saying he had something important to discuss. The 17-year-old borrowed a two-wheeler from a relative and went to the meeting spot near Maduravasal Street in Mannadi in the evening. As the boy was waiting, a man approached him and asked to be dropped at a location a few metres away and the boy obliged. When the boy stopped near an autorickshaw, the pillion rider and those already waiting in the auto bundled him inside the vehicle and took him to an isolated location near the railway tracks behind Govt Stanley Medical College, where they assaulted him and threatened him to bring them the cash and gold within a week.

Muthialpet police traced the Insta friend to a lodge in Periamet and learned that he too had been robbed of 1,300 by the gang. The gangsters then forced him to identify boys from well-off families, so that they could target them and extort money in a similar fashion.

He told police that he told the gang about the 17-year-old as he had learned from the teen's classmates that he used to often steal 500 from his home and hire two-wheelers for short rides. The gang decided they could use this information to blackmail the 17-year-old into stealing more money.

The boy picked up from the Periamet lodge helped police arrested four people -- V Vasanthakumar, 31, P Vijaykumar, 29, A Ananth alias Ishan, 21, and R Raja Ranjith, 31 — in connection with the case. Investigations are on to determine if the gang was involved in similar extortion attempts targeting minors.