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Dismissed constable runs ’extortion racket’ from jail

Posing as DySP of ACB, he called up officials & demanded money to bury ’graft plaints’

A dismissed constable, jailed for extorting money from government officials by impersonating the Lokayukta SP, now faces another charge. He is accused of running another extortion racket from the district prison in Karwar. This time, he posed as DySP of the Anti-Corruption Bureau and made extortion calls to officials from the mobile phones of his two accomplices.

Murugappa N Kumbar, 50, a resident of Sadalaga village in Chikodi taluk, Belagavi district, was a civil constable for around 16 years. He was dismissed from service for misusing the bus warrant facility given to policemen. Bus warrants are issued by the station house officer and the prison head to escort undertrials from one place to another.

Kumbar lost the job but worked an ingenious plan to make money. Posing as the Lokayukta SP, he extorted money from several officials and landed in jail. There are at least 30 cases against him at various police stations in Karnataka. While being lodged in the Dharwad central prison, he met two inmates — Abubakar, 36, a resident of Hosur village in Agumbe hobli in Shivamogga, and Amar Singh, 42, a native of Bihar. Abubakar was jailed for sandalwood smuggling, murder and circulation of counterfeit notes, while Singh was imprisoned for murdering a friend.

Abubakar and Singh were released after sometime but not before they, along with Kumbar, plotted the extortion plan. They got mobile phones for Kumbar who was still in jail. The dismissed constable used the phones to call tahsildars, engineers, sub-registrars, chief executive officers, officials in Vidhana Soudha and Vikasa Soudha and senior officers in transport and education departments. Introducing himself as ACB DySP, he would tell the officials that he received complaints of corruption against them.

He would threaten to book them and send them to jail. Most officials fell into the trap and struck deals with him. Kumar would ask them to deposit the money into some bank accounts in Karnataka and Bihar. Once the money arrived, there will be no phone calls. The racket remained undetected for long. On October 25, 2016, Kumbar contacted Prasanna Kumar, an assistant executive engineer with the BWSSB at Hoskote, and introduced himself as Purushottam, a DySP with the ACB. He said the ACB had received complaints of corruption against Kumar and threatened to send him to jail. Kumar struck a deal with Kumbar and transferred Rs 90,000 into Singh’s bank account in Bihar.

The BWSSB engineer later realised he had been duped, and approached the police. Tracing the mobile phone, police picked up Abubakar in Hubballi on November 21. Based on his information, they caught up with Kumbar in the Karwar prison on November 25. Singh was arrested at Yeshwantpur in Bengaluru on December 4. Police said Abubakar had bought 10 SIM cards in Hubballi using the documents of a mentally challenged woman, Rukmini.