American Woman Stages Her Own Kidnapping In Delhi, Demands Ransom From Parents

A 27-year-old US woman putting up in Delhi for the last two months allegedly staged her own kidnapping after she ran out of money in an attempt to extort cash from her parents, police said.

The woman has been identified as Chloe Mclaughlin.

Came to Delhi on May 3

She had come to Delhi on May 3. She is a graduate from a university in the US and her father, who lives in Washington DC, is an ex-army officer, they said.

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Police said that on July 7, Mclaughlin called her mother and said that she was in an ¡®unsafe environment¡¯ and was being assaulted and beaten by a man known to her.

However, she did not disclose her current location though, they said.

In between, the distressed mother approached the authorities in India, and the US Embassy forwarded the matter to New Delhi District police.

Case reported after two months

The case had been reported after more than two and half months of arrival of the victim in India, police said.

On July 10, Mclaughlin again spoke to her mother via a video call on WhatsApp, but just before her mother could get some more information about her, a man entered the room and their call was cut short, PTI reported.

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The United States Embassy conjectured that the woman was either incapacitated or was being prevented from contacting her family or Embassy, said Amrutha Guguloth, Deputy Commissioner of Police, New Delhi.

Used technical Intel

Police said they used technical intelligence and, in order to ascertain her most recent whereabouts, sought help from Yahoo.com for the IP address Mclaughlin had used to send an e-mail to American Citizen Services regarding her immigration document work on July 9.

Hindustan Times

When the Bureau of Immigration was requested to provide the immigration form of the alleged victim, they gave police the address she had shared with them, which was in Greater Noida, the officer said.

Legal action being taken

Accordingly, police conducted raids at a hotel, where she was suspected to have stayed. But the staff there said no one by her name had checked into their hotel. Later she was arrested from Greater Noida.

Mclaughlin, when she was questioned, confessed that she had staged her kidnapping as she had run out of money within few days of reaching Delhi, following which she and her boyfriend, Okoro, hatched a plan to extort money from her parents, the DCP said.

The Guardian

The woman's passport had expired on June 6 and her boyfriend's passport too had run out of validity, police said.

Legal action is being taken against both for overstaying in India without a valid passport and visa, they said.

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