Cab driver extorts Rs 22 lakh, gold jewelry from woman after overhearing phone conversation in Bengaluru; arrested

Police said that the cab driver overheard the phone conversation with her male friend and later called her by posing the said friend to extort the money and gold jewelry from her through blackmailing.

Bengaluru: In a shocking incident, a cab driver extorted Rs 22 lakh and jewelry from a woman passenger by blackmailing her on the basis of her phone conversation with a friend inside the vehicle in Karntaka capital Bengaluru, police said on Wednesday. Police have arrested the accused cab driver and launched an investigation into the matter.

The accused has been identified as Kiran, a resident of Hersaghatta, Bengaluru. It is learnt that the extortion incident took place in April this year. A police official said that the cab driver overheard the woman traveling in his cab was talking on the phone and exploited it to blackmail her to extort money from her.

A police official said that the woman working in a private company had booked a cab from Indiranagar to Banaswadi in Dec. last year. While traveling in the cab, she talked to a male friend on the phone while the cab driver overheard the conversation. A few days later, the same cab driver contacted the woman by sending a text message in the guise of a friend, police said.

Police said that the cab driver introduced himself as her childhood friend. He told the woman that he was in financial trouble and needed money. In response to his plea, the woman transferred Rs 22 lakh to the accused's bank account online, police said. After a few days, the woman realized that the person talking to her was not a childhood friend and stopped talking to him.

However the accused blackmailed her by threatening to tell her husband about the relationship with her classmate if she does not give him her gold ornaments. The woman gave the 750 grams of gold she had to the driver last April, police said. Police said that the woman's husband inquired about the jewelry to which the woman revealed the whole episode to him.

Later, she filed a complaint at the Ramamurthynagar police station. The police registered a case on the complaint and arrested the cab driver. Further investigation into the case is going on.