Two held for bid to extort money from trader

The police on Saturday registered a case against three persons who tried to extort money from a shopkeeper on the pretext of copyright inspections. The suspects were identified as Rohit Dhamija, Baljinder Singh of Rajpura and Ishwar Singh of Mohali. Two of them were caught by nearby shopkeepers.

The complainant, Gurmeet Singh, said he had a shop, Shera Sports, in Model Town. On September 20, three persons came to his shop and introduced themselves as officials of JMIP Company, Delhi, and told him that they check copyright violations and also conduct checking at shops selling fake branded goods of different companies.

“They brandished a gun and demanded Rs 1 lakh from me. My nephew Simranjit Singh told me that the suspects also visited his shop on September 18 and had taken Rs 50,000 from him. Afterwards, I called other traders, who caught Rohit and Baljinder and handed them over to the police. However, Ishwar managed to flee the scene,” he said.