Reporter’s Diary: When bad friends and greed landed man in jail

However, in some rare cases, one gets to hear the version of the accused i.e. if he happens to be a neighbour of a colleague as it happened with this scribe recently. Last week, this newspaper had reported that nine persons, several of them lawyers, were arrested for threatening a jewellery shop owner at gunpoint to part with Rs 1 crore. The police had reported that after collecting a ransom of Rs. 15 lakh initially from the businessman, prime accused Thangaraj teamed up with his friends and tried to extort Rs 1 crore more, which eventually landed him in jail.  During a recent conversation with a family member of a colleague, this scribe came to know that Thangaraj’s family were their neighbours and were shocked to find that he had committed such a crime. Thangaraj had reportedly purchased a gold chain from the retail chain and found the making to be faulty. “So, he went to replace the gold chain at the outlet and threatened to expose the jewellery shop claiming to be a part of the media. To his surprise, Thangaraj was offered Rs 15 lakh for a chain that he purchased for Rs 3 lakh,” the neighbour recounted.  When Thangaraj recounted the incident to his friends, they urged him to plot a bigger extortion attempt and volunteered to join, which eventually landed him in jail. Even his family members weren’t aware that the accused was capable of such a crime.