When the story about the Paytm extortion case erupted late last month, on the face of it, it appeared to be a very simple case. But now it turns out, there is more to it than meets the eye.
The bare facts that we know about the case are thus: On 22 October, three people, which included two senior employees of Paytm, were arrested for allegedly trying to extort Rs 20 crore from the e-wallet giant’s founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma. One of the two employees was Sonia Dhawan, who, according to her Twitter account, was heading the communications department at Paytm. She also served as Vijay Shekhar’s long-term secretary. The other two arrested were Rupak Jain, Dhawan’s husband, and Devender Kumar, who was also an employee with Paytm.
However, soon after these arrests were made, police revealed that there was a fourth person who was a key to the racket as well. According to the police, it was Rohit Chomwal who made the extortion call to Vijay Shekhar’s brother, Ajay. In the call, which was made allegedly on 20 September, Chomwal demanded Rs 10 crore and threatened to leak data that was in his possession if his demand was not heeded. Vijay Shekhar Sharma even allegedly transferred 2 lakh rupees on 15 October.
While Sonia Dhawan and two others were arrested, Chomwal, according to the police, remained at large. Chomwal moved Allahabad High Court against the FIR on 1 November. On 12 November, the court came back with its order, according to which, while it refused to squash the FIR, it gave Chomwal protection from arrest till the investigative authorities completed their investigation.
Speaking to The Quint, Rohit Chomwal’s legal counsel Manish Trivedi said:
“The FIR that was filed by the police was both inculpatory as well as exculpatory. In other words, while it alleged that my client, Mr Chomwal, had both asked for an extortion amount, it also said he alerted the complainant (Mr Vijay Shekhar Sharma and his brother) to the involvement of those arrested.”
The writ petition that Chomwal filed with the Allahabad High Court, and which is in The Quint’s possession, alleges that Chomwal has been wrongly accused in the case and has been made an “escape goat” (sic) especially when the petitioner (ie: Chomwal) helped Vijay Shekhar and his brother in apprehending the three ‘culprits’.
The writ petition goes into sufficient detail into how the alleged plan to extort money from Vijay Shekhar Sharma was hatched by Dhawan and her other two accomplices, and how, instead of being a party to this plan, Chomwal, in fact, helped the e-wallet company’s founders nab the culprits.
What Does the Petition Say?
The petition begins by talking at length about how the plan to extort money was hatched.
“That the fact of the matter is that the petitioner who is running an NGO/Trust in the name of “The Holy Cow Foundation” which is involved in imparting education to the poor and needy children was approached by the accused Devender Kumar in June 2018 with a proposal that he can arrange for a donation from Paytm company for the NGO / Trust with the condition that the petitioner will have to reimburse 50% of the money received by way of donation by his NGO/Trust.”
And when Chomwal’s NGO did not receive the said donation, he called Devender Kumar about this, on which he was asked to come to Delhi and meet Vijay Shekhar Sharma himself. When Chomwal did indeed come, instead of introducing him to Vijay, Devender introduced him to Rupak Jain, “who tried to persuade the petitioner along with Devender Kumar to help him in extorting money from the owner of Paytm Sri Viay Shekhar Sharma on which the petitioner refused and went back to Kolkata.”
Chomwal was then again allegedly approached by Kumar to “give effect to the extortion of money from the brother of the complainant Viay Shekhar Sharma who refused and subsequently called the complainant and his brother Sri Vijay Shekhar Sharma and informed them about the evil and nefarious designs of the accused persons.”
It then goes on to say that while the FIR filed by Paytm alleges the theft of data which was later on used as a bargaining chip in order to extort money, the nature of the data was never made clear.
“That the allegations levelled in the First Information Report are that some personal and confidential data has been stolen from the computer of the complainant Sri Ajay Shekhar Sharma and his brother Sri Vijay Shekhar Sharma who are the owners of Paytm company by the secretary of Sri Vijay Shekhar Sharma Smt Sonia Dhawan along with her husband Rupak Jain and Devender Kumar pursuant to which Sri Vijay Shekhar Sharma received a WhatsApp call from the petitioner Rohit Chomwal that he is in possession of some personal and confidential data and threatened him to deposit 20 crore rupees…else he will make the data public and which can cause them a big loss in the form of business transaction and personal and public life,” the petition reads.
Furthermore, concerning this alleged data, “it is further submitted that the complainant in the FIR has not at all revealed the nature of the data stolen from their computer as had it been any data regarding banking transaction then it would have been a case of fraudulent transaction rather than demand of ransom.”
Some Unanswered Questions
A close reading of the petition, however, raises a few questions that so far have remained unanswered, by both Vijay Shekhar Sharma and the accused, Rohit Chomwal.
To begin with, the petition quotes from the FIR in which it was alleged that while “personal and confidential data has been stolen from the computer of the complainant (ie Sharma)”, Chomwal, in a WhatsApp call to Vijay Shekhar Sharma and his brother Ajay, demanded a ransom amount of Rs 20 crore, which needed to be deposited in an ICICI Bank account. The petition mentions the account number as well. Following this, Vijay’s brother, Ajay, first made a deposit of Rs 67 in the aforementioned account, and later deposited Rs 2 Lakh in the same account.
This little nugget of detail is crucial because either it means those who demanded the ransom were so foolish as to actually quote a bank account number which can be easily traced by the police, and hence lead to them being apprehended, or that there is some lingering detail which Paytm has so far failed to come forward with publicly.
Similarly, if Chomwal was indeed demanding the ransom amount, why on earth would he then go on to spill the beans about Dhawan and others to the Paytm founders?
Chomwal too has a few questions that he has so far failed to answer. In the petition he clearly writes that Devender Kumar approached him with the proposal of arranging a donation for his NGO – Holy Cow Foundation. And when the donation was not forthcoming, Chomwal approached Kumar and subsequently gets sucked into the whole extortion mess without his consent. But what the petition does not make clear is the nature of his relationship with Kumar, and why Chomwal, in particular, was approached with this proposal to extort money from the founders.
Meanwhile, the cops investigating the case, however, are quite confident of cracking it irrespective of the High Court order on Chomwal, and will be filing a chargesheet soon. SHO Pant, who is leading the probe, in an interview to The Economic Times, said that “all three accused (Jain, Dhawan and another Paytm employee, Devender Kumar) behind bars have recorded confessional statements under Section 161 (CrPC) admitting to their guilt.”
However, the police are tight-lipped about the nature of the data that was allegedly stolen by the Dhawan and her accomplices. All that the police are willing to reveal is that Vijay Shekhar in his statement to the cops had said that he will reveal the details about the nature of the data stolen only to the court. The cops plan to attach his statement with the chargesheet.
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