BENGALURU: The ‘sextortion’ case that culminated in the death of an IAS aspirant has taken a turn for city police after two of the accused, who were arrested on charges of abetting suicide, reportedly went off the surveillance radar after coming out of prison on bail.
The accused duo, who was supposed to mark their attendance at KR Puram police station every second Saturday as per the bail conditions read out to them in April last week, failed to appear before cops for the past two months.
Naushad alias Robin Khan, 28, and Javed alias Mama, 25, of Rasulpur in Rajasthan’s Bharathpur district were arrested in connection with the 26-year-old IAS aspirant’s death by suicide at his residence in Bhattarahalli near KR Puram on March 23.
The deceased, an MBA-degree holder, had been blackmailed by a gang of cybercriminals after they befriended him on Facebook.
Police said he had accepted a friend request sent by a stranger who called herself Neha Sharma.
They started chatting and the ‘new friend’ even made a video call to him, undressed herself and told him to do the same.
The gang video recorded the act and started demanding money from him by threatening to upload the video and chats.
The IAS aspirant borrowed money from friends to pay the gang but their demands only increased.
Unable to bear the harassment, he allegedly hanged himself.
The sextortion racket came to the fore when the gang members, unaware of his death, started making queries about him.
Police tracked the accused on the basis of phone calls to Rajasthan and arrested two persons.
The 57th additional city civil and sessions court on April 28 granted conditional bail to both the accused on the condition that they shall not tamper with prosecution witnesses either directly or indirectly and should cooperate with the investigation.
The duo should mark their attendance once a month (between 10am and 5pm on the second Saturday) for six months and should not leave KR Puram police station limits without prior permission, the court said.
However, KR Puram police confirmed the accused did not mark their attendance on the second Saturdays of both May and June.
Police said they were not intimated about the bail granted to the duo.
“We recently got to know of their release on bail and are waiting for the suspects to mark their attendance.
As lockdown was in force on second Saturdays of May and June, we suspect they did not mark their attendance.
We will take appropriate action, including approaching the court, for cancelling their bail on the grounds of violating bail conditions if we find they are absconding,” a police officer said.