Paytm case: Secretary eyed quick bucks

A jobless husband and desire to buy property in the capital led Paytm boss Vijay Shekhar Sharma's secretary to mastermind an extortion bid of Rs 10 crore on her own employer, police said. The police said they have raided the house of the accused Sonia Dhawan, secretary of Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar and recovered some evidence in regard with the case.

 

 
           

Sources in the police also revealed that the accused planned to steal data from Paytm in order to launch their own start up later, similar to Paytm.

Being the secretary of the managing director, Sonia Dhawan had access to all documents and data of the company. Accused Sonia Dhawan, secretary of Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar, her husband Rupak Jain and Devendra Kumar, who worked as senior manager in the administration department of the company was arrested on Monday.

"Since Sonia's husband Roopak Jain was jobless and had suffered major loss in real estate business so they asked Sonia to to steal data from Paytm and give it to Devendra Kumar, from the administration department," said Ajay Pal Sharma, Senior Superintendent of Police, Gautam Budh Nagar.

Later Kumar handed out that data which was stored in a hard disk to Rohit Chomal who lives in Kolkata and was threatening to leak the same data. They used a fake WhatsApp account through which they contacted the Paytm owner and demanded the extortion money.

"When they first made the call on September 20, they demanded Rs30 crore but later came down to Rs 20 crore. It was much later with a couple of rounds of negotiations that the accused settled for Rs 10 crore," said Sharma.

 

 
           

Sharma further said the woman had around 10 months ago expressed to her boss that she wanted to buy a property for herself in NCR. However, not seeing her interest getting materialised, she opted for the easy way to make quick money.

"They continuously demanded Rs 10 crore and were even successful in getting Rs 2.67 lakhs. However after Chomal's identity came to light the entire nexus was revealed. Following which Shekhar made a complaint against them after which the three were arrested on Monday Morning from their office," said Sharma.

A team of Noida police officials raided her residence in Surajpur on Tuesday and seized the hard-disk and other materials. Police gave also identified the role of another man from Kolkata who is yet to be arrested.

Police have recovered a pen drive which contains information and phone calls used during extortion, a hard disk which contains personal and confidential data of Paytm. The print out of WhatsApp chats and four mobile phone have also been recovered.

Sources said that the accused were also planning to launch their own e-money wallet so they stole the data which would make it easier for them to come up with a their own start up.


Source