Mumbai crime branch arrests Instagram food influencer ‘turbanmirchie’ for extorting Mulund dairy shop

Police lay a trap

The shop owner, however, approached the police saying that Gujral had been demanding money for taking down the video and doing positive promotions. An FIR was registered in the case at the Mulund Police Station and later the matter was handed over to the crime branch.

The crime branch decided to lay a trap and catch Gujral red handed. Officers asked the victim to tell Gujral that he would pay the influencer Rs 50,000 through UPI and meet him on Sunday to pay Rs 2 lakh. “As the accused was taking the money from the victim, we caught him red handed and placed him under arrest. He was produced before the court and remanded to police custody,” Roshan said.

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An officer who is part of the probe said that they had found video footages from CCTV cameras at the Mulund shop where a relative of Gujral, who had accompanied him to the store, is heard boasting that their reel on another eatery had brought down that shop.

“We have found footage of the particular eatery on their ‘Afternoon Times’ page and are checking if they had extorted the owner of that shop as well. It is a popular wada pav eatery with several branches in the city,” the officer said.

“A few relatives of the accused, too, have social media accounts where they feature similar content. We are checking if others are also involved and whether there is an extortion racket at play here where they threaten eateries into paying up,” said an officer from Unit V of the crime branch which is investigating the case.

Gujral describes himself on his ‘turbanmirchie’ page as an artist who is a IIM Indore alumni and is a ‘National Creators Award’ nominee. It also mentions he is the ‘editor-in-chief’ of ‘Afternoon Times’ and ‘Lokmaha News’. On his account he reviews eateries, five-star hotels in primarily in Maharashtra and Goa that have thousands of views.

On his ‘afternoon times’ account he features local news events mainly in Mulund and Thane and has videos, which claim to ‘expose’ eateries that are not hygienic.

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