New Delhi: Umesh Kumar Sharma, CEO of news channel Samachar Plus, was arrested today after his channel's editor Ayush Gaud filed a complaint against him at Rajpur police station on August 11. He alleges that Umesh Kumar has been carrying out sting operations to extort money from bureaucrats, politicians in the state by "trapping" them.

Gaud complained further that he put pressure on bureaucrats in one of the sting operations. Then, having failed to execute the plan, Kumar issued a death threat.

On Sunday, soon after a non-bailable warrant was issued under Sections 386, 388 and 120 B of the IPC against Sharma, Uttarakhand Police arrested him after raiding his house in Noida and offices in Ghaziabad.

During the raids, various types of phones, hard disks, pen drives, memory cards, iPads, laptops and DVDs were seized. Also, Rs 39,73,000, $ 16,279 US and Baht 11,030 in cash was confiscated, police said in a statement.

Sources say that, in an attempt to foil Umesh Sharma's bid to escape from the hands of law, Uttarakhand Police secretly did their homework for about 79 days after the FIR was lodged.

Ashok Kumar, ADG – law and order, Uttarakhand Police, had been closely monitoring the whole operation. Police and administration see this arrest as a massive success of the crackdown on illegal activities by high-profile people in the state.

Background

Umesh Kumar Sharma had come into limelight after an alleged sting of Harish Rawat settling ministries surfaced in the media. Later, a few of his MLAs left the party and toppled the state government.

According to sources, Sharma, who came to Dehradun 14 years ago to become a real estate developer, became the editor-in-chief of Samachar Plus. He was given Y security. He would travel in a huge convoy as a VVIP. Sharma was even slapped with rape charges in February 2018.