Robin Hood graduate extorts money from ‘timid’ doctors

A 23-year-old graduate who had been giving sleepless nights to doctors from Mumbai and Pune was arrested on Thursday by the anti-extortion cell of the Pune police for allegedly extorting money from the doctors.

The accused acted in this way as he believed that doctors ‘extort’ a lot of money from patients by way of fees for treatment and hence they needed to be ‘punished’.

Crime branch sources say that over the past month, doctors from Mumbai and Pune have been living in fear. The source of their terror are text messages that state in typical gangland Hindi, “You better pay up Rs50,000. It won’t take more than a bullet to take you down.”

“The sender of the message would identify himself as Sameer Sheikh and leave a bank account number, asking the recipient of the message to deposit the ransom amount in it,” said police inspector D Patil of Bandra police station.

A Bandra based skin-specialist, who was one of the recipients of the message, lodged a complaint with the Bandra police station on Wednesday. As the Bandra police started the investigation, Pune police, who were also hunting for the accused for similar offences there, arrested him.

The accused has been identified as Sameer Kulkarni, a resident of Ahmednagar. Initial investigations by the police revealed that Kulkarni was earlier employed on a temporary basis with BSNL, but was removed on a cheating charge. While his mother also works as an accountant with BSNL, his father works with a private company.

The accused would source the cell numbers of the doctors from phone directory services, telephone directories, websites and also by calling up hospitals. The officials said that his cell phone records have revealed he had sent these messages to many doctors from Mumbai and Pune.

The accused, though fluent in English, would send the messages in Hindi, using an alias to terrify the doctors.

Kulkarni, during his interrogation, also revealed that he targeted the doctors in order to teach them a lesson, as he believed they overcharge patients unnecessarily. He also was of the opinion that most doctors are ‘timid’ and hence can easily be made to shell out money.