Two Students have been Arrested for Sending Extortion Emails to Mukesh Ambani.
On October 27, Rajveer Khant sent a total of 5 emails to Mukesh Ambani, in which he was demanded to give an amount of Rs 20 crore. On 28 October he demanded ₹200 crore and on 30 October he increased his demand to ₹400 crore.
The extortion threats received by Reliance Industries Limited Chairman Mukesh Ambani through emails in the last few days have been traced to two students. Mumbai Police said that prima facie there is no connection between the two but the investigation is still going on.
The Crime Intelligence unit of the Crime Branch picked up Rajveer Khant, 21, from Kalol in Gujarat, while Ganesh Ramesh Vanaparthy, 19, from Warangal in Telangana was caught by the Gamdevi police. Police said Khant, who had sent several extortion threats mails to Ambani, was a cyber geek who believed he would never be caught, and had lured the industrialist with the ‘catch me if you can’ line in his mails.
“Khant, a third-year B.Com student, used to access the dark web through a virtual private network (VPN) and also watch YouTube for information,” said Raj Tilak Roshan, DCP, Crime Branch. “They found the most secure way to send end-to-end encrypted emails, which keeps user data safe and does not give away any information even to investigators.”
On October 27, Rajveer Khant sent a total of 5 emails to Mukesh Ambani, in which he was demanded to give an amount of Rs 20 crore. On 28 October he demanded ₹200 crore and on 30 October he increased his demand to ₹400 crore. “On October 31 and November 1, he sent threatening emails to the industrialist. For all this, he created an email ID, shadabchan@mailfence.com,” said Roshan.
Khant was confident that police would be unable to trace him, as the company did not share details of its users, and he had used other VPNs to hide his Internet Protocol (IP), making it difficult for investigators to access him. Access had become more difficult. However, the Crime Branch Unit team headed by Milind Kate wrote to various agencies and studied various VPNs and traced him to Kalol.
In the extortion threats email sent to Ambani, he had written with great confidence, ‘Catch me if you can’ He chose Ambani and one more industrialist to whom he sent an email demanding ₹100 crore, as basically he wanted to create havoc,” said the police officer. Police have seized Khant’s desktop computer and two mobile phones.
He displayed extreme confidence by directly addressing Ambani in two emails and challenging him with words like ‘catch me if you can’. Additionally, he specifically targeted another prominent industrialist, sending him emails with demanding ₹100 crore, because basically he wanted to create havoc,” said the police officer. Police have seized Khant’s desktop computer and two mobile phones.
Meanwhile, Gamdevi police on Saturday arrested 19-year-old Ganesh Ramesh Vanaparthy, resident of Warangal, Telangana. Wanaparthy is a computer science student and had sent an email to Ambani demanding ₹500 crore.
“After Ambani received the first few emails from fencemail.com, Vanaparthy sent him an email demanding ₹500 crore,” the police officer said. “We have traced him through the technical details of the mail and arrested him. He had deleted the mail, hence we have also applied Section 201 (destroying evidence) in the case.
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(Inputs from Media Houses)
