Mumbai woman held taking Rs 5 lakh in blackmail case; senior citizen says he paid Rs 4 crore

A senior citizen in Mumbai has been blackmailed with video call recordings and obscene footage and made to pay about Rs 4 crore, it has emerged. When a further Rs 5 lakh was demanded, he went straight to the police. Acting on his complaint, the police caught the accused woman red-handed while she was accepting Rs 5 lakh, and arrested her.

The accused has been named as Nazia Mehmood Shaikh, alias Nazneen. The complainant works as a manager at a gold shop in Ghatkopar owned by a relative. In 2020, the accused came to the shop with another woman. Her acquaintance with the complainant grew from then, and from 2024 the two began talking on the phone.

According to the complaint, in 2024 Nazia made a WhatsApp video call and held an obscene video chat with him. Some days later, she threatened to spread the videos everywhere and extorted some money from him. A few days after that, she told him that the obscene chat had reached the police, the court and the CBI over the internet, and that she had been summoned for an inquiry into it. Fearing disgrace, the complainant kept paying. The complaint says a total of Rs 4 crore has been extorted from him since 2024.

Some days later, she lied that the footage had reached the Madras police and that they were demanding Rs 5 lakh to settle the matter. When she suspected that no more money would come, Nazia threatened to break his arms and legs and kill him. Money was being extorted repeatedly, and he was being threatened with death if he did not pay. He therefore decided to go directly to the police station, and he went and filed a complaint.

While the complaint was being recorded, Nazia phoned him. The phone was on speaker, so the police heard the call too. After hearing the extortion demand themselves, the police acted immediately. Through the complainant, they called the woman to a spot near Radhakrishna Hotel on HBS Marg to collect the money. The accused was caught red-handed accepting Rs 5 lakh, made up of some genuine and some counterfeit notes. The action was carried out by the Crime Branch of the Ghatkopar division.