SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, Sept 10: A criminal from Bihar has allegedly demanded extortion of Rs 12 lakh from Bokaro businessman Manoj Kumar Singh and threatened to kill him if the order is not followed.
The businessman lodged an FIR at Chas (Bokaro) police station against notorious criminal Karu Singh of Mokama (Bihar) on Thursday evening.
Officer-in-charge of Chas police station Ram Pravesh Kumar when contacted on Friday admitted to having registered an FIR against Karu Singh for demanding extortion. “Police have begun tracing the location of the mobile number through which a call had come to the businessman.
Manoj, a resident of Chas Sriram Batika, in his FIR has said he received a call (8304335042) at 6 pm on September 6. The caller identifying himself as Rakesh Ranjan alias Karu Singh from Mokama, Bihar, demanded Rs 12 lakh as extortion if he (Manoj Kumar Singh) wanted to continue the scrap business. Karu Singh threatened to kill him like railway contractor Bokaro Lovely Singh was killed, if he failed to pay him in two days.
Railway contractor Lovely Singh had been shot dead in his Balidih based office by unidentified criminals for extortion in 2017.
“First I ignored the call but on the advice of friends and relatives I finally informed the police for safety,” he said. Last year (October 1, 2020) bike-borne criminals had also fired on the younger brother of Manoj Singh at his residence.
Meanwhile, panic prevails among the businessmen as many of them in Bokaro and Dhanbad have received several extortion calls from unknown criminals in the last 10 months.
