Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar gets extortion call of Rs 20 Crore

Adm Desk Oct 25, 2018

Three arrested including Vijay’s long time secretary Sonia Dhawan, the mastermind behind the plot.

A trio of Sonia Dhawan, secretary to Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Devender Kumar (Sonia’s Colleague), and Rupak Jain (Sonia’s husband) plotted against the business tycoon Vijay Shekhar. She was arrested from her office in Noida near Delhi. The police walked in the office to arrest her on Monday afternoon while she was at her desk working. The police held her accused of stealing data and personal information from Vijay Shekhar’s Computer and blackmailing him thereafter for a huge sum of Rs. 20 Crores. when a police team walked in and arrested her on Monday afternoon.

Sonia has been a long time secretary of Vijay and was recently promoted to the designation of head of communication at paytm. As of now the details do not clarify the theft of data but it is very much known that Sonia had access to all the confidential files, laptop and mobile phones that belonged to Vijay. She allegedly passed on the data to a fourth man named Rohit Chomal who made the extortion call to Ajay Shekhar Sharma, who is the brother of Vijay and also the Senior Vice President in the company.

Chomal who belongs to Kolkata is missing since the case started. He made his first call asking for Rs. 10 Crores in exchange of the data on 20 September.

Speaking to TOI Ajay Sharma said. “I received the first call around 4 pm on September 20, when the man demanded 10 Crore for the information, when I refused to pay he called Vijay”. The caller repeatedly called Vijay afterwards and raised the amount to 20 Crore over the successive calls.

As per a statement by the police-“They threatened to cause the firm losses and dent its public image."

The police also told that she had been in the company for 10 years, almost from the very beginning that includes the launch of the e-wallet and its successive growth as one of India’s renowned company. On the other hand, Devendra Kumar has been in the company since past 7 years.

Addressing the issue senior police officer Ajay Pal Sharma said "The owner of Paytm had made a complaint with the police that their employees, a woman and her aides, had stolen some data from the company and were blackmailing him. They were demanding Rs. 20 crore for not leaking it,"

The police also confirmed that the three accused have admitted to be involved in the crime. The mastermind of the crime was Sonia though. The three culprits have been charged with theft, extortion, cheating, criminal breach of trust and conspiracy. They have also been charged under the Information Technology Act.

According to the reports by PTI, Paytm confirmed in a declaration that the Noida Police have arrested three people, including a woman employee. In an official report Paytm stated "The employee along with two other accomplices attempted to extort money from Vijay Shekhar Sharma on the pretext of leaking his personal data. We are standing by our colleagues till the police enquiry reaches its meaningful conclusion,"