4 held in Noida for extorting men through Grindr dating app
Three of the accused, Arbaaz, 21, Usman, 20, and Vishal Kumar, 19, are residents of slum settlements in Sector 9, while the fourth accused, Himanshu, 19, is a resident of Harola in Sector 5.
Vishal is the alleged mastermind of the group, said officials at Sector 24 police station.
According to the police, the accused would create fake profiles on the app, and chat with victims under the pretext of engaging in a consensual relationship. They would then call them to isolated locations to loot their belongings. 'Once the victim arrived, the accused would distract them in conversation while others would snatch their mobile phones, wallets, and cash,' the Gautam Budh Nagar police said in a statement.
The arrests were made during a routine police check at the Mother Dairy intersection in Sector 11 on Tuesday morning. 'The four were riding two motorcycles with fake number plates. Upon questioning, they failed to produce valid documents, leading to their arrests,' said a police officer.
The police also recovered four mobile phones, an illegal pistol with one live cartridge, and two knives from them, and seized their motorcycles.
The accused have confessed to multiple cases of theft and cheating in Noida and the Delhi-NCR region, the police said, adding that they would often meet at a local park to consume drugs and plan their operations. All of them are either school dropouts or illiterate. Their target was mainly men using Grindr, who were less likely to approach the police due to the social stigma attached to their identities, the police said.
The police have also found their involvement in three incidents, including robbing a man of Rs 25,000 and two phones in Sector 34 on July 9, and two other phone robberies this month.
The police said efforts are on to trace others who may have purchased stolen devices from the accused, and to verify if the gang has links to similar cases reported in Delhi and Ghaziabad.
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