Seven Held in Indore Blackmail Case After Rs 1 Crore Extortion Threat

Overview

• Police arrested seven people in mid‑May, including three women and a police constable, after an alleged April 28 incident in which a liquor businessman was intercepted and told to pay Rs 1 crore or face release of private photos and false cases.
• Investigators seized multiple mobile phones and electronic devices from the suspects and have begun technical forensic work to identify people shown in recovered videos and to map the scope of the alleged racket.
• Among the arrested are Alka Dixit, her son Jaideep Dixit, Lakhan Choudhary, Shweta Vijay Jain, Jitendra Purohit, Reshu (Reshu Choudhary) and constable Vinod Sharma, and police say Shweta Jain was previously arrested in a 2019 honey‑trap extortion case.
• Interrogations and initial device trawls reportedly produced names of additional influential victims, including two politicians, and that disclosure has led the Indore police commissioner and senior officials to handle the inquiry cautiously while verifying leads.
• The case fits a recurring pattern of honey‑trap blackmail in India, where staged encounters and recorded material are used to extort victims, and the probe could widen if forensics and witness statements corroborate the emerging names and videos.