Paytm Founder Faces Extortion, Personal Aide Among Three Arrested For Blackmailing Him For Rs 20 Crore

Three employees of Paytm were arrested on Monday by the Noida Police on allegations that they were trying to extort Rs 20 crore from the company founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma by threatening to leak stolen personal data and confidential information, PTI has reported.

The arrested woman, who allegedly is the mastermind behind the extortion bid is Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s personal secretary. Her, along with two others had threatened to leak data and misuse information in order to dent Paytm’s public image and cause loss to the firm, officials said. Her husband and another employee of the company were also arrested.

According to some reports, the company had already paid a sum of Rs 67 lakh to the account of the blackmailers, but the ransom amount was constantly being increased. The blackmailers allegedly used a Thailand-based number to make WhatsApp calls for the ransom.

Paytm also engaged the expertise of an Israeli company to trace the location of the miscreants and later lodged a complaint against them at Noida Sector 20 police station.

Three of the accused, arrested by a team of the Sector 20 police station, were identified as Sonia Dhawan (Vijay Shekhar Sharma's woman secretary), her husband Roopak Jain and another Paytm employee Devendra Kumar. There is also a fourth accused, Rohit Chomal, who is a resident of Kolkata and had allegedly made the extortion call to Sharma's brother Ajay Shekhar Sharma. The local police are in touch with their counterparts in Kolkata to track down Chomal.

"The owner of Paytm had made a complaint with the police that their employees, a woman and her aides, had stolen some data from the company and were blackmailing. They were demanding Rs. 20 crore for not leaking it," Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ajay Pal Sharma said.

"Taking immediate action on it, an FIR was registered and three persons, including the woman, arrested. They are being probed about the data and their modus operandi. Police will share the facts as they are unearthed," Ajay Pal Sharma said.

The accused have been booked under Indian Penal Code sections 381 (theft by clerk or servant of property in possession of master), 384 (extortion), 386 (extortion by putting a person in fear of death or grievous hurt), 420 (cheating), 408 (Criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant) and 120B (party to a criminal conspiracy).