Last year, Mangale and his wife Shraddha, a Marathi film actor, launched a spa in Borivli and invited Bollywood personalities like Rakhi Sawant, Mukesh Rishi, Big Boss celebrity Gautam Gulati, Sonali Raut, Zareen Khan and Vindu Dara Singh. "Mangale told us he had gifted an iPhone 6 to each of them. These phones had spy apps installed in them. He claims he wanted to listen to their private conversations and later blackmail them," said senior inspector Pradeep Sharma. Chief of Thane police's anti-extortion cell Pradeep Sharma said that private detective-turned extortionist Satish Mangale is being grilled to find out how exactly he installed the spy apps in the phones that he gifted to the Bolloywood personalities at the launch of Shuddha spa and saloon in Shimpoli in Borivli (west). Mangale has told the police that his friend Jigar, who also runs a detective service in Mira Road, had installed the spy software. Police are likely to question Jigar on Friday .
Technical experts say it is almost impossible to instal any illegal software in an iPhone, except by "jailbreaking" (see box). Mangale said Jigar jailbroke the iPhones and downloaded the spy apps in their phones. "We will call some of the Bollywood victims to know whether Mangale blackmailed them or extorted money from them," said inspector Rajkumar Kothmire.
Some claimed Mangale had cloned the actors' mobile phones and used to listen in to their conversations.Mangale, arrested last Friday for blackmailing controversial IAS officer Radheshyam Mopalwar, would get close to senior government officials and record conversations with them, said Thane cops. He had seven email accounts where he would save the recorded conversations with his "victims". Around 4,000 call records were found saved in Mangale's laptop, which the cops are analysing. Targeting the Bollywood personalities shows Mangale was perhaps trying to widen his extortion network. Mangale and Shraddha were arrested while allegedly accepting Rs 1 crore from Mopalwar in exchange for the "incriminating" audio tapes of him purportedly striking a land deal in Borivli and for withdrawing a corruption complaint against him.
Sources said a police team on Thursday took Mangale to his native place in Kolhapur to search his house. Mangale has built a huge house worth Rs 50 lakh in his tiny village.Cops claimed Mangale had studied up to Class X, dropped out of a computer diploma course and started working as a private detective. Soon, he seemed to have veered into blackmailing tactics. Now, he has two well-furnished apartments and a fleet of cars.
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