New Delhi: Three persons have been arrested for allegedly making an extortion demand Rs 35 lakh from their former employer, a businessman, and also making threat calls to him, police said yesterday.

Kishan Gupta (30), Vijay Singh (25) and Ravi Kumar (22) were arrested and the case of extortion in which they had demanded money from Rajan Gupta, a resident of Kalkaji here and was running an electronics shop was solved, a senior police official said.

Gupta had lodged a complaint on January 14 that when he returned home, a gun shot was fired outside his house and he received a call threatening him that if he wanted safety of his family, he should arrange Rs 35 lakh.

Police said Gupta also received several other threat calls and lodged an extortion case at Kalkaji police station.

During investigations, technical surveillance was laid and Kishan Gupta was nabbed and at his instance, his accomplices Vijay Singh and Ravi Kumar, both brothers, were also caught.

The accused told the police that seven years ago they were working as salesmen at Gupta's shop and then left the job and started their own business in which they suffered huge financial loss.

Recently, they were invited by Gupta at the inauguration ceremony of his new house at Mehrauli where they come to know that he has huge money and they hatched a plan to extort money from him, police said, adding they got the idea from a movie to extort money by kidnapping Gupta's only son as they knew he loved him a lot but later on changed the plan.

A mobile phone along with SIM cards used in the crime have been recovered from the accused, police said and added that further investigation was going on.