Gang of 14 posing govt officials & extorting truckers captured

Hoshiyarpur: Punjab police informed on Tuesday that it had caught 14 members of an interstate gang who posed as government officials and extorted money from truck drivers who loaded sand and gravel, PTI reported.

The police have seized Rs 1 crore, four jeeps, four laptops, charges, weighing machines, a currency counting machine and nearly 22,000 fake receipts.

The gang donned as police and officials from the mining department and were extorting money under the guise of campaign against illegal mining. Their operations were run at Pathankot, Hoshiarpur, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar and Rupnagar in Punjab and certain areas in Himachal Pradesh, police said.

In a statement, the Senior Superintendent of Police Dhruman H Nimbale said that the arrestees are residents of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttarakhand. The police had acted on a tip-off that some people working in a private mining company were involved in extortion in Hajipur.

After a case got registered at a local police station on Friday, the police had arrested one of the accused named Rajiv Kumar. Later, the progressed probe led to the arrest of Kulwinder Singh and Navjinder Singh. Based on the information provided by the arrested trio, police captured the remaining accused, police informed.