Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 22 (IANS) The family of a businessman, who has been arrested for allegedly blackmailing sitarist Anoushka Shankar, urged a Delhi court Tuesday to let them meet him but the court rejected their plea.
Junaid, a 29-year-old from Mumbai, was arrested by Delhi Police Special Cell Sep 16. He was in police custody for two days and then in judicial custody, currently lodged in Tihar Jail here.

Moving an application before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kaveri Baweja, Junaid’s family members pleaded that they should be at least provided with a copy of the first information report (FIR) and allowed to meet them.

However, the court rejected the plea and said: “Since you have already gone through the court records, I don’t think there is any need of providing the copy of the FIR now.’

The court also dismissed the plea of allowing family members to meet Junaid and said: “This permission should be sought from the Tihar jail superintendent.”

The Special Cell of Delhi Police had Sep 7 lodged a complaint after Anoushka Shankar’s father, world-renowned artist Pandit Ravi Shankar wrote to the union home secretary.

“The accused had hacked Anoushka’s e-mail account and gained access to some of her private photographs. He was blackmailing her and sent at least six mails demanding money for not making the photographs public. He demanded $100,000 from her,” said a senior Delhi Police official.

Pandit Ravi Shanker had also told police that Anoushka had given her laptop for repair to a south Delhi firm in February. Police then zeroed down on the staff of the service centre and interrogated some people there. From the leads gained in interrogation, they traced the accused in Mumbai and arrested him.

Police have booked him under section 386 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) relating to “extortion by putting in fear of death or hurt”. The crime fetches a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail.