Ex minister’s grandson arrested by ACB for extorting money from PHED engineers

Jaipur: The anti-corruption bureau (ACB) on Wednesday arrested one Sahil Rajpal, the grandson of a senior BJP leader for impersonating as an ACB officer and then extorting money from PHED officials by threatening to implicate them in an ongoing ACB inquiry.

Sahil Rajpal is allegedly the grandson of Radhey Shyam Ganganagar – a senior BJP leader and former cabinet minister in Rajasthan. Rajpal was found making VoIP calls from an MLA’s bungalow in Jyoti Nagar.  The bungalow was allegedly allotted in the name of BJP MLA Mohan Lal Gupta. He was from Gupta’s quarters and placed under custody on Wednesday.

The accused was making these calls through ‘Caller ID Spoofing’. By using VoIP (Voice-over-Internet-Protocol) on the Internet, one can alter the information forwarded to the receiver’s caller ID in order to hide the true origin ID. In simpler terms, caller ID spoofing allows you to display a phone number different than the actual number from which the call was placed.

The phone calls made by Rajpal was routed though internet services located in nine different countries. The police officials had to get details from nine countries in order to identify the culprit.

The accused used the name of recently promoted IPS officer Shankar Dutt Sharma who is investigating a corruption case involving SPML company.

ACB ADG Alok Tripathi said that they got a complaint about someone making calls to PHED officials and threatening them to implicate in bogus corruption cases if a cash amount of Rs 10 lakh was not paid by each one of them. One of the officials, who received the calls, even admitted that he had paid Rs 1.5 lakh to the caller.

“This is the first case in which someone used VoIP to pose as an ACB official and demanding money. The technical investigation was supervised by IG Sachin Mittal who exposed Rajpal,” said Tripathi.

Tripathi said that apart from PHED officials, the representatives of SPML Company also received the similar calls. The company registered a complaint regarding this with the CBI which forwarded the complaint to the ACB for further investigation.

An FIR was registered against Sahil Rajpal. After verifying the complaint, the ACB officials arrested Rajpal from B-1 MLA quarters in Jalupura.

Rajpal is allegedly the grandson of former BJP MLA and former cabinet minister Radhey Shyam Ganganagar. He was defeated by Kamini Jindal in 2013 assembly elections.