An assistant sub-inspector was arrested on Tuesday on grounds of extorting money from a lottery vendor in Maharashtra’s Thane city, police informed according to a report by PTI.

The policeman in question is Rajendra Patil who comes from unit-1 of the Thane crime branch, the station house office of Naupada police station said. The complainant who levied these accusations runs a lottery business and his statement says that the accused had caught him and a few others gambling on October 7 and had allegedly demanded Rs 1.50 lakh from him for not registering a fake case, he said.

The complaint reads that an offense under sections 384 (extortion), 506 (criminal intimidation), and other relevant provisions of the IPC was registered against Patil at Naupada police station in October 2021, the official said.

He has also been accused of forcibly extracting Rs 9,000 from the complainant and later Rs 10,000, he said, adding that Patil wanted protection money from the complainant. The official also informed, “The accused told the complainant that he will have to shell out Rs 5,000 per day if he wants to engage in gambling and Rs 1.5 lakh per month to allow him to gamble.”