Kota, Jul 12 (PTI) Five people were arrested and four, including three Madhya Pradesh Police personnel, booked in Rajasthan's Baran district in connection with alleged extortion of Rs 1.70 lakh from two men, police said on Wednesday.

The accused police personnel allegedly intercepted the two complainants near the Rajasthan-Madhya Pradesh border and took them to Chachoda police quarters in Madhya Pradesh on the night of July 6, they said.

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The complainants, Vatan Singh Meena (22) and Shivam Yadav (20), are residents of Chhabra town in Baran, according to police.

According to the complainants, they were going to Bapcha village on the night of July 6 when three Madhya Pradesh police personnel -- Rajeev, Sanjay and Balvir -- in plain clothes intercepted them and forcibly made them sit in their car. The three policemen were also accompanied by a lawyer, Mohit Vakil.

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The accused took the complainants to the Chachoda police quarters and forced them to pay Rs 1.70 lakh after threatening to frame them in a case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, said Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Girdhar Singh Chouhan.

While Meena and Yadav paid some of the amount to Mohit in cash, they paid the rest online, he said.

The two men lodged a police complaint on Monday and an FIR was registered in the matter at Bapcha police station under sections 384 (extortion) and 364A (kidnapping for ransom) of the Indian Penal Code and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act on Tuesday, the officer said.

After the accused policemen found out about the FIR, they sent five men to return the money to the victims on Tuesday night. Following a tip-off, these five men, including a journalist, were arrested, the DSP said.

The police recovered Rs 1.70 lakh from their possession and seized their SUV. The arrested accused admitted that they had come to return the money to the victims, he said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)