The Uttarakhand Police arrested the owner and CEO of a news channel in Noida on Sunday on charges of extortion and blackmailing.

Umesh Kumar, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Samachar Plus news channel was nabbed by the Uttarakhand Police.

Umesh rose into the limelight in 2016 for conducting a sting operation on former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat.

The sting operation showed Rawat making efforts to do a fishy deal with a reporter to settle some MLA – by providing them financial benefits – during the political crisis when 10 Congress MLAs had launched a revolt against the CM.

Harish failed to handle the horse-trading allegation and the sting operation helped the BJP in the state assembly election in 2017.

Umesh was arrested on charges of conducting sting operation by deliberately creating scenes to cause damage to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and senior bureaucrat Om Prakash. The cops have named Praveen Sahani, Saurav Sahani, Rahul Bhatia and former Vice Chancellor of Uttarakhand Ayurveda University Mritunjay Mishra as co-accused in the complaint.

Though the police usually keep the First Information Report (FIR) in secrecy, within hours of arrest, the copy of the FIR was shared on various social media sites. The copy was circulated via WhatsApp and Facebook which indicates that it may be leaked deliberately by the police.

The police acted on a complaint from a member of the sting operation team, who alleged that the channel owner was pressuring him to conduct a sting operation on Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Rawat and Additional Chief Secretary Om Prakash. The member was asked to offer money to the bureaucrat, to show that some deal was taking place, and also to make the Chief Minister say that Om Prakash was with them.

The plan was to create political instability in the hill state and force the state government leaders and officers to pass all the projects told by the channel owner.

A small-time property dealer, Umesh Kumar has made a big fortune in a very brief period. He has good connections with influential people and loves to move with celebrates and political leaders. Very recently, cricketer, Mohammed Shami was with Umesh in Dehradun.