The Special Task Force (STF) of the Odisha Crime Branch has busted an interstate extortion racket and arrested two persons for allegedly posing as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers and exhorting money from government officials.
“They received the money from Odisha government officials from their PhonePe and GooglePay wallets. So Far, STF has traced the transaction and payment of more than Rs 16 lakh.
“ The investigation is on to find out whether they have done similar impersonation and extortion targeting Jharkhand government officials too as they were staying in Ranchi,” the STF in a press release said.
SP STF K.K. Panigrahi said: “The arrested duo are brothers. They especially chose “ED” because of the current prevailing news coverage about various ED raids. They watched and studied all ED-related news articles so that they could impersonate and imitate well to scare/extort government officials. They posed as additional director of Enforcement Directorate, Bhubaneswar.”
The two brothers have been identified as Tarinisen Mohapatra and Brahmashankar Mohapatra. The duo was arrested following a complaint by the sub-collector of Chattrapur in Ganjam district.
The STF said to maintain their luxurious lifestyle, the brothers hatched a plan to cheat the vulnerable government officials (officials of Tahasil, Collectorate, RTO etc.) by impersonating the “additional director of Enforcement Directorate, Bhubaneswar”.
