Slumdog Millionaire actor, 20 year old Ajit Pandey was arrested from his Mumbai residence in Bhyandar on Sunday following charges that he was extorting money and trying to bag film roles by threatening film producers over the phone. Ajit used an alias to threaten the producers. He assumed the name of a certain Irfan Husri, an associate of the underworld kingpin Chota Shakeel, and asked producers either to sign “his man” Ajit, or pay the hefty sum of twenty lacs. Pandey used a friend’s sim card for making these calls.

To make things convincing he would then call up the same producer as himself and tell him that Husri had threatened that he should work with that particular producer or face consequences. Pandey went to the extent of actually lodging a complaint with Mira Road Police station about the alleged threats. Pramod Kapoor (Ramanand Sagar productions) was one of the producers whom Ajit called. Though at first the police were misled, it did not take them long to figure out that Pandey was behind these calls. One of the things that helped them to understand that Pandey himself was making the calls was the fact that in all cases the producers were only being asked to sign Panday, and not any other actor.

Pandey has acted in several TV serials. Some of these are Oh Darling Yeh Hai India and Saarthi. In Slumdog he played the role of a goon who is hired by a gangster (played by Mahesh Manjrekar) and seems to haver taken his role too seriously.