Two more persons, including a woman, were arrested on Friday for alleged rape and extortion involving a model, taking the number of those held to eight, three of them policemen, and all the accused were sent to police custody by a local court.
They were produced before a local court, which remanded them in police custody till April 29. Six of them, including the policemen, were arrested on Thursday.
On April 3, some of the accused stopped the vehicle of the 28-year-old victim and took her to a nearby police post. There, one of the policemen allegedly assaulted her sexually and also snatched around Rs 4.98 lakh cash from her, the crime branch told the court during the remand application hearing.
The prosecution said the custodial interrogation of the accused was necessary to find out if more persons are involved in the case and also to recover the money forcibly taken from the model.
Defence lawyers told the court that their clients were being falsely implicated and they were going to seek action against the model under Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act.
The accused were identified as Sunil Katape, Suresh Suryavanshi and Yogesh Ponde -- all policemen -- Javed Sheikh, SanjayRange, Tanvir Hashmi, Ayesha Malviya and Abrahim Khan.
Of them, Ibrahim Khan and the woman, Ayesha, were arrested on Friday.
All have been booked under Indian Penal Code sections related to rape, criminal conspiracy and extortion. The victim had sent an SMS to Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria on April 21, complaining about her alleged sexual exploitation by some men, including the three policemen.
Maria then called her to his office and after hearing her forwarded the complaint to MIDC police station, following which a case was registered.
"Since extortion part has been corroborated with the complaint filed by the victim, our efforts are on to retrieve the extorted money," Deputy Commissioner of Police Dhananjay Kulkarni said, adding they were also trying to verify the allegations levelled by the model.
