Noida: Gang held for luring gay men on dating app, blackmailing them to extort money

Four people have been arrested for blackmailing homosexual men. (Representational image)

A Meerut-based gang of four people was arrested by Noida Police on Thursday for allegedly targeting homosexual men, blackmailing and extorting money from them.

The gang had been active in Noida and Greater Noida for the past six months, with the accused aged between 19 and 22 years, police officials added, PTI reported.Once the target agreed to meet, they used to take them hostage and extort money from them, PTI reported.

The action followed a complaint by one such victim, who said he had met a man named Ankit on the Tinder app and was robbed by him when he went to meet him.

The complainant said Ankit picked him up from the Gokalpuri metro station and took him to a house in Pratap Nagar. He was then asked to strip. Once he removed his clothes, four other men entered the room and started blackmailing him.

The accused snatched his mobile phone and forced him to give them the password of his bank account, according to the complaint filed on Wednesday. They transferred about Rs 1.25 lakh from the complainant's bank accounts and kept him in confinement for some time before letting him go, according to an NDTV report.

A complaint was lodged at Phase 3 police station on Wednesday, accusing the suspects of extorting money from him.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central Noida) Shakti Mohan Avasthy said acting on the complaint, police nabbed the four accused on Thursday from a park in Sector 65, PTI reported.

Talking to reporters, he detailed how the gang created fake accounts on the app, initiated conversations with victims, and established relationships with them. During these interactions, the gang secretly recorded videos and gathered evidence such as photos, chats, and footage to use for extortion, he said.

“We registered a case based on a complaint by one of the victims, which led to the arrest of four individuals today. These individuals operated as a group, extorting victims for cash, online payments, or gold and silver jewellery,” Avasthy said.

Those held have been identified as Shani (20), Karan Kumar (22), Rajat (22) and Tushar (19), police said. They have confessed to the crime.