Four scribes booked for extortion

Hyderabad: The Mailardevpally police on Tuesday has arrested four journalists for allegedly threatening and trying to extort money from a flour mill owner. The accused scribes demanded Rs 1.5 lakh from the victim threatening to expose his “illegal business”, police officials said.

The journos were identified as P. Venkatesh Goud, editor of Praja Vignana newspaper, V. Praveen Kumar, photographer of Ashwin, a Telugu daily, G. Shankar, photographer of Aadab Hyderabad and K. Krishnaiah, a freelance photographer, all are from LB Nagar area.

Four of them approached the owner of Srilaxmi flour mill in Mailardevpally and demanded for money.

“Earlier, the owner was caught by the enforcement agencies when he used to sell rice illegally. The accused people came to know about it and started blackmailing him telling they would send police to raid the mill,” said Mailardevpally police inspector S.N. Jaweed.

The vexed victim approached the police and lodged a complaint. Interestingly, this is not the first time that the mill owner has been heckled by the journalists. Police said, earlier too some fake journalists had extorted money from him.

Police booked a case against the journos under IPC Section 448 (house trespass) and 385 (extortion).