Paytm founder's secretary, two others arrested

Two long-time employees of Paytm including the personal secretary of the company’s founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and another person were on late Monday arrested.

They reportedly stole sensitive data from Vijay’s laptops, mobile phones and other computers in the office, and attempted to extort Rs 20 crore from him.

Police have arrested the Paytm boss’ secretary Sonia Dhawan, her husband Roopak Jain and another employee of the company, Devender Kumar.

The police is now looking for the person who made extortion calls to Ajay Shekhar, Vijay’s brother and vice president of Paytm .

The caller, who identified himself as Rohit Chopal, is believed to have been making extortion calls from Kolkata.

Noida police is trying to locate Chopal in coordination with Kolkata police.

According to police, Vijay’s secretary and her husband, a property dealer, were the mastermind of the extortion plot— They came to know this from Chopal.

Chopal spilled the beans after Vijay’s brother, on the instructions of police, agreed to pay Rs 2 lakh to Chopal and even transferred the money to a bank account, managing to assure him that the rest of the amount would immediately be paid to him if he discloses as to how the data was stolen.

Sonia (31), who was working as Vijay’s personal secretary for the last 10 years, had access to his laptops, mobile phones and other computers installed at the company’s office.

She and Devender reportedly stole sensitive data and deployed Roopak’s associate (Chopal) to make extortion calls to the Paytm vice president.

Devender was also a long-time employee of the company. He was working in the administration department for the last seven years.

The stolen data not just included company’s financial details and crucial information about the company’s business but also Vijay’s personal information.

The Chopal, while making extortion calls to the Vijay’s brother, was threatening to leak the sensitive data.

He was also threatened to use Vijay’s personal information to tarnish his public image, police said.

Police, which arrested Sonia and Devender from Paytm’s Noida office and Jain from some other location, would seek to take the trio in their custody for further interrogation after producing them in a local court.

“They are being probed about the data and their modus operandi. Police will share the facts as they are unearthed,” a police officer said.