A journalist was arrested by the Noida police on Monday for allegedly blackmailing Union minister Dr Mahesh Sharma after conducting a “sting operation” on him, reported The Indian Express.

According to the NDTV, the woman claimed to have caught Sharma accepting a bribe and allegedly demanded ₹ 2 crores from him after threatening to make public an “objectionable” video from a pre-election meeting of the BJP leader, police said. They also said that the woman is allegedly part of a gang helmed by a man who ran a local news channel that was shut down after demonetisation.

“We were informed at around 1.30 pm by the Union minister, telling us that a person is blackmailing him to the tune of ₹ 2 crores. The blackmailer allegedly asked him for 45 lakh by evening and the rest of the money later, else he would release a particular video to the media. We found that a woman had been sent by the person making the demand. The woman has been arrested and we are questioning her to ascertain further details,” Gautam Buddh Nagar SSP Vaibhav Krishna said. He also said that prima facie the gang was running this extortion racket for a while now and has targeted other people also. The other members of the gang are yet to be arrested; meanwhile, an FIR was being registered in this case, he said.

The arrest was made from Sharma’s Kailash Hospital amid heavy barricading and security deployment.

According to Sharma, he was approached by the woman prior to the elections. “We had come in touch last month when she expressed interest in a door-to-door campaign… It was just a conversation. I got a call from another person in the first week of April claiming they have a video of me talking about money, which was absolutely untrue. It later turned out to be a demand for money…,” he said.