Udaipur: A govt schoolteacher from Banswara district was arrested Monday for allegedly masquerading as a gangster and demanding a staggering Rs 1.40 crore in extortion money from two local jewellers. The 35-year-old had reportedly accumulated a debt of Rs 80 lakh due to an addiction to online gaming.Banswara superintendent of police Sudhir Joshi said accused Vikesh Kumar Kamol, who was posted as a Grade II Mathematics teacher at the Govt Senior Secondary School in Chudada, had resorted to a life of crime after struggling to manage burgeoning debts.He said Kamol claimed to have stopped gaming about a year ago, but the debt remained unpaid. To repay it, he allegedly took out five loans in his own name, pawned relatives’ jewellery, took a Rs 6 lakh salary advance and secured a Rs 30 lakh loan in the name of his wife, who is also a govt teacher. He planned the extortion bid when he was unable to clear his dues despite all these efforts, Joshi added.Police said the accused, under pressure from creditors, hatched a conspiracy to demand extortion money by posing as a gangster. He gathered information on two jewellers in Banswara city by speaking to a farmhouse watchman whom he approached under the pretext of buying a cow.On March 30, Kamol sent the two jewellers extortion notes, demanding Rs 90 lakh from one and Rs 50 lakh from the other. The notes included dire threats to their families if they failed to comply, and claimed he had the resources to carry out these threats.Kamol allegedly slipped one threatening letter under the shutter of the first jeweller’s shop and handed another letter in an envelope to an employee at the shop of the second jeweller. The letters instructed the victims to leave the extortion amounts near a water tank under a neem tree at Bhoyan Ghati on Dahod Road, an isolated location, police said.The jewellers filed complaints the next day, based on which Rajtalab police registered a case. Police examined footage from nearly 300 CCTV cameras across the city’s entry and exit points and key routes.They also contacted stationery shops that sell the type of envelope used to post the extortion letters.Based on CCTV footage and route mapping, police eventually traced the suspect to his native Timbamahudi village, from where he was arrested. Police claimed Kamol confessed during interrogation that mounting debt from online gaming had driven him to hatch the extortion plot.
