The Charkop police have arrested a 45-year-old driver, who extorted Rs 52 lakh from a 48-year-old woman over the past four years, after convincing her that the police had found drugs and condoms in her car, and she would be implicated in a narcotics case. The woman and her family believed him and went bankrupt, as they sold her jewellery and took loans from relatives and close friends, even the watchman of their building, to meet his demands.

The driver, Sohail Khan, was arrested from Virar recently and remanded in police custody, said a police officer. The complainant, Panna Chetankumar Mistry, a resident of Charkop, who approached the police in December 2022, had a travel agency. She had rented a car she owned to a woman who later cheated her. However, the woman told Mistry where she had kept the car. Mistry took Khan along to get the car. This was in 2019.