Murder threats, extortion calls to husband – Wife main accused, father-in-law arrested

Mangaluru: A strange incident has come to light in which a woman extorted Rs 50 lakh from her husband  by posing death threats to him through her friend and in the course of events has resulted in the arrest of the accused woman’s father by the Ullal police. The arrested man has been identified as K Vasudeva Prabhu, father of Ambika Nayak alias Ambika Prabhu from Ananth Nagar Manipal.

The main accused in the case is Ambika Nayak and she along with her friend, B Manjunath from Mandya district, who conspired with her are currently absconding. The police are on the lookout for them.

The incident

Apparently, Ambika had posed murder threats to her husband through her friend, Manjunath and made her friend to place a demand for payment of one crore rupees from her husband, Ganesh Nayak from Kumpala, Thokkottu here, failing which he was threatened with murder. Thus, she was successful in extorting Rs 50 lakh from her husband. She further pushed her luck and demanded for additional Rs 50 lakh. However, her husband Ganesh Nayak, by now was fed up with this situation and filed a complaint in Ullal police station in the year 2015. In his complaint, he accused his wife Ambika Nayak (42), father-in-law, K Vasudeva Prabhu (70), and his wife’s friend, Manjunath (32).

Later, Ullal police summoned Manjunath to the police station in January 2016 and released him on bail. In March that year, notice was sent to Ambika Nayak to appear at the police station and was later let go on a bail. Yet the police carried on with the investigation.

This year on October 12, the police filed a charge sheet relating to murder threat and cheating case in the chief senior civil and CJM court here. The charge sheet accused Ambika Nayak, Manjunath and Vasudeva Prabhu of joining hands with the common intent of conspiring to cheat Ganesh Nayak, who was threatened through phone calls and letters, causing a breach of trust and destroying evidence.

The court served summons to the three accused, duly asking them to be present in the court on November 19. As the accused failed to appear in the court, the court issued an arrest warrant. In this connection, the police arrested Vasudeva Prabhu from his residence in Manipal and presented him in the court on November 27^th.

The modus-operandi

The chief accused Amika’s aim was to usurp her husband’s property and money, even when residing in his residence at Kumpala here. She was close to B Manjunath alias Manju from Mandya and through him used to pose threats and demand money from her husband. However, as her husband Ganesh Nayak was working abroad, he failed to realize that his own wife was part of this conspiracy.

Ganesh’s father-in-law Vasudeva Prabhu supported his daughter’s devious plans. The trio used to send letters to Ganesh Nayak demanding payment of one crore rupees, failing which they threatened to kill him and his family members. Ambika Nayak then destroyed the letters after collecting them from her husband thus disposing off any evidence and reaffirming her trustworthiness at the same time.

It is being said that Manjunath used to call Ganesh Nayak using different telephone numbers from different places. Scared, Nayak had transferred Rs 50 lakh to Manjunath’s bank account, which was shared by Ambika and Manjunath, and a part of this money was given to Vasudeva Prabhu to run his business.