Pujari demands 5cr from Bengaluru builder

AHMEDABAD: After terrorising Gujarat businessmen and builders for extortion, underworld don and former Chhota Rajan aide Ravi Pujari has made extortion calls to a Bengaluru builder for more than Rs 5 crore.
Ahmedabad crime branch officials said Pujari had demanded more than Rs 5 crore from a Bengaluru builder and had given a UK mobile number for further communication regarding the money.
"Pujari had made the extortion calls using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) through a proxy server which makes it difficult to locate him. The UK-based mobile number given to the builder for further communication also seems to be operating from another country," a senior crime branch official said.
Crime branch officials said they had verified the voice in the recorded conversation over phone and it is Ravi Pujari's voice. "The voice samples of Ravi Pujari with Mumbai police match the voice in the recordings of extortion calls made to Gujarat businessmen and Bengaluru builder," a police officer said.
Police said Pujari was a close aide of underworld don Chota Rajan who was recently deported from Bali in Indonesia. "However he formed his own gang after fleeing to an African country and ran an extortion network across big cities in India," said a crime branch official.
The official further said that Ravi Pujari had made extortion calls to several businessmen in Gujarat, including a "builder from Paldi area in Ahmedabad; his relative and an administrator of a co-operative society in Anand; and a builder in Rajkot. The threat calls for extortion were made between December 2015 and January 2016."
The crime branch officials and Bengaluru police are probing the link between calls made to Gujarat businessmen and to the Bengaluru builder.