Hyderabad: Jubilee Hills police have arrested four men from Boduppal for allegedly dressing up as transgender persons to extort Rs 5,000 from a BMW owner on one of the city’s busiest stretches.

The accused are Yadagiri, 44, Satyanarayana, 41, K Ramesh, 40, and S Ramesh, 42. They were picked up on Thursday, October 1, and produced before a court the next day, which sent them to judicial remand.

The incident dates back to Friday, August 21. The BMW owner was leaving a coffee shop on Road Number 45 in Jubilee Hills when four people posing as transgender persons stopped his car, forcibly demanded money and took Rs 5,000 from him. An extortion case was registered against unidentified persons.

The case gained traction after a video of the confrontation, shot by a bystander, went viral on X. Director General of Police (DGP) CV Anand reportedly directed the Jubilee Hills police to investigate.

Tracing the accused took police more than a month. Investigators went through footage from hundreds of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the area, followed the group’s route from Jubilee Hills to Boduppal and made the arrests with help from the West Zone Task Force.

The arrests come weeks after Anand announced a statewide push against such extortion.

On Sunday, September 6, he said he would instruct commissioners of police across Telangana to launch a special drive against extortion and begging rackets, after complaints that groups of transgender persons were demanding money at housewarmings and other occasions.

The announcement came two days after a group allegedly demanded Rs 50,000 at a housewarming ceremony in Hyderabad.

Anand recalled that he had run a similar drive as Hyderabad Police Commissioner. He also stressed that the action was not aimed at the transgender community as a whole, pointing to government initiatives that have engaged transgender persons as traffic assistants and in HYDRAA.

Days later, on Wednesday, September 9, he urged citizens to dial 112 if anyone tried to extort money from them, saying police had been told to act immediately on such complaints.