Delhi Police have busted a gang that befriended gay men on Tinder dating app and extorted them. A minor is among the five people who have been taken into custody by the cops.
The accused used the popular dating service to zero in on their targets and call them for a meeting pretending to be someone with similar sexual preference. Once the target agreed to meet, they used to take him hostage and extort money from him.
The action followed a complaint by one such victim, who said he had met a man named Ankit on the Tinder app and was robbed by him when he went to meet him.
The complainant said Ankit picked him up from the Gokalpuri metro station and took him to a house in Pratap Nagar. He was then asked to strip. Once he removed his clothes, four other men entered the room and started blackmailing him.
The accused snatched his mobile phone and forced him to give them the password of his bank account, according to the complaint filed on Wednesday. They transferred about Rs 1.25 lakh from the complainant's bank accounts and kept him in confinement for some time before letting him go.
A case was registered at the Harsh Vihar police station, after which cops used technical surveillance and local intelligence to track the culprits.
They have arrested four men - identified as Arjun, 24, Nitin, 23, Akash, 24, and Faizan, 19 - and detained a minor. They have confessed to the crime. The cops also recovered the complainant's mobile phone from Nitin, the main accused.
Arjun, Nitin, and Akash had robbery cases filed against them in the past.
