NEW DELHI – A police officer accused of kidnapping a crypto trader for a $40 million Bitcoin ransom has been arrested in India.
Authorities said on Wednesday that seven accomplices of police officer Dilip Tukaram Khandare were also arrested in the raid.
Khandare had hatched a plan to kidnap 38-year-old Vinay Naik after learning that the Pune-based trader had a huge bitcoin wallet.
He and his accomplices kidnapped Naik on January 14 and demanded that he transfer all his digital currency holdings, worth $40 million, along with an additional 8,00,000 Indian rupees in cash, NDTV reported.
The kidnappers released the crypto trader the next day when they realized the police were following them, and the perpetrators were arrested on Tuesday.
