A hopeful civil servant aspirant turned burglar in Chhattisgarh's Durg district recently broke into a couple's home. Instead of stealing valuables, he recorded their intimate moment and attempted to extort Rs 10 lakh from them.
The couple, shicked by the blackmail, decided to approach police and Vinay Kumar Sahu’s short-lived career as a criminal ended with his bunglings. He had used a stolen phone to take the video and WhatsApp it to the couple, without thinking that it would be under surveillance. "He made it easy for us to track him down," said an officer. Post the horrific experience, the couple, meanwhile, triple check doors and windows and check every corner before going to bed these days.
Police said that Sahu, 28, had tried to bag a govt job but failed the PSC exam thrice, and decided to go for a change in career. He stole a few mobile phones from his locality’s vegetable market, but couldn’t progress beyond petty theft or his familiar neighbourhood. “He was so lazy that he hit the same places repeatedly,” said an officer.
Crime branch DSP Hem Prakash Nayak said that Sahu had burgled the couple’s house in Ahiwara locality twice earlier and believed he would get third-time lucky as well. He sneaked into their home on last Friday and was looking for something to steal when he came upon the couple in an intimate moment. He stood in the shadows and took a video on a smartphone he had stolen earlier. The morning after, the couple was rattled when their own video popped up on their phone from an unknown number. It was followed by a call to cough up Rs 10 lakh. The couple had no clue how their personal moment was recorded. They filed a police complaint, mentioning the number from where the video and extortion call was made. A special team was constituted to reach out to the accused and nab him. The cybercell had no problem tracking Sahu. He was still using the same phone and the same number, and was picked up on Wednesday. Police seized three mobile SIM cards and handsets from him and deleted the video