Two students arrested for sending extortion emails to Mukesh Ambani

MUMBAI: The extortion threats received by Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani via email in the last few days have been traced back to two students. The Mumbai police said that prima facie the two were not connected but investigations into this are still on.

The crime intelligence unit of the Crime Branch picked up Rajveer Khant, 21, from Kalol in Gujarat while Ganesh Ramesh Vanaparthi, 19, a resident of Warangal in Telangana, was nabbed by the Gamdevi police. The police said that Khant, who sent a series of mails to Ambani, was a cyber geek who was confident he would never be caught, and had baited the industrialist with the line ‘Catch Me If You Can’ in his mails.

“Khant, a third-year B Com student, used to access the dark web through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and also watch YouTube for information,” said Raj Tilak Roshan, DCP, Crime Branch. “He found the safest ways to send end-to-end encrypted emails, which keep user data safe and do not disclose any information even to investigators.”

Khant sent five emails to Mukesh Ambani on October 27 and demanded ₹20 crore. On October 28, he demanded ₹200 crore, and on October 30 raised his demand to ₹400 crore. “On October 31 and November 1, he sent emails threatening the industrialist. For all these, he created an email ID, shadabkhan@mailfence.com,” said Roshan.

Khant was confident that the police would be unable to trace him, as the company did not share details of its users, and he had used other VPNs to mask his Internet Protocol (IP), making it more difficult for the investigators to reach him. However, the Crime Branch Unit team, headed by Milind Kate, wrote to the various agencies, and by studying various VPNs, traced him to Kalol.

“He was so confident that in two emails that he sent to Ambani, he wrote, ‘Catch Me If You Can’. He chose Ambani and one more industrialist to whom he sent an email demanding ₹100 crore, as basically he wanted to create havoc,” said the police officer. The police have seized Khant’s desktop computer and two mobile phones.

Meanwhile the Gamdevi police on Saturday arrested Ganesh Ramesh Vanaparthi, 19, a resident of Warangal, Telangana. Vanaparthi is a student of computer science, and had sent an email to Ambani demanding ₹500 crore.

“After the first few emails came to Ambani from fencemail.com, Vanaparthi sent him an email demanding ₹500 crore,” said the police officer. “We have arrested him, tracing him through the technical details of the mail. He had deleted the mail so we have applied Section 201 (destruction of evidence) in the case as well.”

Vanaparthi told the police that he had done this for fun and there was no other intention behind it. After he saw on news channels that Ambani had received several emails demanding money, he too sent the industrialist an email on November 1 “for fun”.

“We have got his custody till November 8,” said Abhinav Deshmukh, additional commissioner of police, South region. “He will be handed over to the crime branch, as the case has been transferred to the crime branch for investigation.”