Rs 26,000. That’s how much a 47-year-old religious man had to offer a young man in his twenties over 24 hours last weekend to delete a compromising video.
In a statement made at the Pope Hennessy police station in Port-Louis late on the afternoon of Tuesday November 21, the religious man, who lives in Tranquebar, recounted the whole affair, which began at around 5pm on Saturday November 18.
On that day, he had come across a young man who had introduced himself as Hans and who lived on rue Pouce, Port-Louis. He told him he was looking for work. He then gave Hans his contact details so that he could clean up his yard afterwards.
As soon as he left, the young man called to tell him that while they were talking, he had lost a sum of Rs 500 on the road. He said he had looked there, but couldn’t find his money.
The young man came to his door and asked him for Rs 1,000 so that he could buy groceries for his child. Taken with pity, the religious man said he gave him Rs 500.
Before leaving, the young man told him he could do anything for him. At that very moment, the forty-year-old confided that he had asked him if he had a gay friend who would have liked him to give him sexual pleasure, to which the young man replied in the affirmative. At around 7:30 p.m., the young man came to see him to inform him that this friend had rejected the proposal, but that he was personally tempted by the experience. The two men then went to a room set aside for the purpose.
Shortly after leaving home, he received a call from the young man telling him that he had been filmed. Immediately, he ran out into the street to join Hans. Hans demanded Rs 15,000 for the video to be deleted. He took Rs 5,000 from his home and went to an ATM opposite the Cathedral Church to withdraw Rs 10,000 to give to his blackmailer. The blackmailer reassured him that the video had been erased before leaving. On Sunday morning, November 19, he received unanswered calls from the blackmailer. The man then turned up at his house in the company of two other people. In an aggressive manner, holding a piece of brick in his hand, the young man told him that the compromising video was still on his memory card. He demanded another Rs 11,000 to erase it. They went to a counter of the Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB) at Rue Royale, Port-Louis for this transaction. To avoid experiencing this trauma, he left his home and went to a friend’s house in Quatre-Bornes.
On Monday November 20, from noon to 5 p.m., Hans kept calling him.
