Lawyer duo’s blackmail bid on RIL goes horribly wrong

Trying to blackmail India's biggest business conglomerate may not be a great idea, as an Ahmedabad lawyer and his sidekick have found. The city police have arrested the duo, who apparently tried to extort Rs50 lakh from the Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Industries Ltd through a sting operation.

Advocate Jayendra Shah and his associate Dilip Motwani had allegedly asked for the money as the price for withdrawing their petition before the Bombay High Court objecting to the merger of Reliance Industries with group company Reliance Petroleum. They were arrested after a RIL executive filed a complaint.

The merger has been approved by the relevant authorities as well as the shareholders of the two companies. However, Shah had sent a written complaint against the merger to various ministries, the Registrar of Companies and the Securities and Exchange Board of India to try and stall the deal.

A Reliance statement said Shah had been interviewed by the company some 20 years ago but didn't get a job. According to the statement, Shah initially asked for Rs5 lakh to withdraw his petition. Later, Motwani told RIL officials over the phone that the price had been increased tenfold.

Shah then allegedly threatened Reliance Industries that its officials would be framed in false criminal cases and could even be ''eliminated'' unless Rs10 lakh was paid immediately. The senior company executive immediately lodged a complaint with the crime branch in Ahmedabad.

Thereupon, the detection of crime branch of Ahmedabad police laid a trap at Shah's office in the Paldi locality in Ahmedabad and caught the duo red handed in the act of accepting Rs10 lakh from the RIL official, who was used as a decoy.

The duo was produced in court on Friday and remanded to two days' police custody. The police have filed charges under Sections 384 (extortion), 387 (attempting to put a person in fear of death in order to extort money) and 506(2), which relates to criminal intimidation, in the Indian Penal Code. A laptop, mobile phones and some documents have been seized from the accused.

More to it than meets the eye?
A PTI report said police suspected professional rivalry in the case. According to the agency, Shah, during his phone calls to Reliance Industries officials, would say he had been assigned the job by some Mumbai-based associates and would need to consult them before withdrawing his petition objecting to the merger.