Vijayawada: Three held for blackmailing priest

Vijayawada: City police who maintained utmost secrecy in the case of Catholic Church priest being blackmailed, arrested three accused and produced them before court on Thursday.

Mareedu Sasidhar, 28, Korrapti Joseph, 58, and Mandadi Ramoji Chow-dary, 29, were charged under Sections 120(b), 384, 385, 386, 450, 452 and 506 of IPC and also Section 5 of AP Protection of Depositors and Financial Establishment Act 1999.

According to police, kingpin of the extortion gang and accused No. 1 Sudheer, with the help of Joseph, who was a devotee and got acquaintance with the priest aged 64, since 2015, forced the priest to invest Rs 50,000 in Sanjeevini Mutually Aided Cooperative Society owned by Sudheer in June 2015.

Devotees of the church known to the priest also deposited money in Sudheer’s society following suggestion by the priest. It is Joseph who introduced Sudheer to the priest. Despite the priest requesting to return his money, Sudheer ignored the pleas and dragged the issue.

Later in September 2015, Sudheer and Joseph invited the priest to conduct prayer to bless his business ventures at Uma Holiday Inns resort at Donabanda and the priest did so, according to police report.

After the prayer, the priest was served food mixed with sedatives and after consuming it he fell unconscious, police reported. He was dropped at his residence in the church by Sudheer and co. After 10 days, Sudheer appeared before the priest with morphed photos and videos where the priest was seen with a semi-nude woman.

With the same videos, other gang members including Srikanth, who morphed the pictures, Joseph, Vijay, Prakash, Prasanth, Subramanyam, Sasidhar and Ramu extorted money from the priest on various instances from September 2015 to March 2016, police claimed.

Police also claimed that on March 10, all the gang members trespassed into the residence of the priest with a knife and threatened him to pay Rs 1 crore. They also threatened that they would upload the videos on the Internet and also murder him and picture it as a suicide.

The priest managed to ward them off at his residence and later approached the police with the help of another priest. A case was registered on March 11 in Marchavaram police station. The three accused were sent to 15-day judicial remand.