Four tourists driving to Lonavala on the Pune-Mumbai Expressway were allegedly stopped, held for hours and extorted of ₹5 lakh on July 5. The men who stopped them were not impersonators. They were genuine Highway Safety Patrol personnel from the Khandala Highway Police Assistance Centre, posing as narcotics officers. Five of the six accused, including three serving police staff and three home guards, have since been arrested, according to Punekar News.
What happened near Kamshet
A car carrying a police beacon and six men in khaki intercepted the tourists near Kamshet in Maval taluka, according to the victims’ account reported by the Free Press Journal. The men allegedly pointed to a cigarette packet in the tourists’ car, claimed it was ganja, and threatened to book them in a fabricated narcotics case unless they paid ₹5 lakh. The tourists were reportedly held for several hours and driven to an ATM in Talegaon to withdraw the money before one of them managed to raise an alert, drawing police attention and leading to a rescue.
Pune Rural police have registered a case under multiple sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita covering extortion, wrongful confinement and criminal intimidation at Kamshet police station. Punekar News identifies the accused as a police naik, two constables and three home guards attached to the highway patrol post, and reports they face both criminal prosecution and departmental action. District police officials confirmed the men held genuine postings at the highway patrol centre rather than being outside impersonators.
Why a uniform makes this different
Expressway extortion scams aren’t new to Maharashtra’s highways, but most prior cases involved private individuals dressing up as cops. This one involved a real patrol post: the beacon, the posting and the authority the accused used to intimidate their victims were genuine, not fake. That matters for public trust. The Khandala-Kamshet stretch is one of the state’s busiest tourist corridors, carrying weekend traffic from Mumbai and Pune toward Lonavala and Khandala. Travellers have little practical way to tell a lawful patrol stop from an extortion attempt when the patrol itself is compromised.
What it means for residents and travellers
For the thousands who use the expressway every weekend, the case is a reminder that a police beacon and uniform alone don’t prove a stop is lawful. A genuine narcotics search normally requires documented grounds, an independent panch witness and a written seizure memo, not an on-the-spot cash demand. Anyone stopped under similar circumstances can ask for the officer’s name, badge number and station, or call 100 before complying with any payment. The case also puts pressure on Pune Rural police to explain how internal vetting missed staff allegedly running an extortion racket from an official post, and whether supervision of these roadside patrol centres needs tightening.
What to watch next
The sixth accused reportedly remains unarrested as of the latest reporting, and departmental proceedings against the arrested staff are still pending. Two things will determine whether this stays an isolated prosecution or becomes the start of a wider audit: whether Pune Rural police publish findings from an internal review of the Khandala Highway Police Assistance Centre, and whether other complaints of similar shakedowns on the corridor surface.
Sources: Free Press Journal, Punekar News
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.