NEW DELHI: A flirtatious conversation with a telesales executive cost a 23-year-old private firm employee his life. Trapped for months in a web of extortion and blackmail , he decided to write a suicide note and jump in front of a train in southeast Delhi on Thursday.

It was a regular workday for Kaushal Kumar, who worked for an MNC in Okhla, when he received a call from a woman trying to sell him a SIM card. When he told her he didn’t need any, she offered to enrol his existing connection in a surprisingly inexpensive plan.

Five minutes into the call, Kaushal asked the woman her name. She introduced herself as Neha (23) and struck up a friendly chat. The call ended on an informal note. The next day, Kaushal got a call again from ‘Neha’. This time, she wasn’t selling a SIM card but was calling to find out how Kaushal’s day had been.

In the coming weeks, ‘Neha’ and Kaushal met on social network and even exchanged private photographs. They ostensibly fell in love and Neha promised to marry Kaushal. However, till this point, the two had never met each other in person.

A few weeks ago, the two had a nasty argument. This was when Neha’s 40-year-old sister—who called herself Preeti—visited him in his office. She blasted him for harassing her sister and threatened to lodge a police complaint. She told him that, due to his harassment, Neha had attempted suicide by swallowing poison.

In the note allegedly written by Kaushal, he has claimed that Preeti dragged him to Okhla police station where the matter was settled following much negotiation.

From this time on, everything went on a downward spiral for Kaushal. Preeti threatened him to implicate him in a rape case and extorted money from him so frequently that most of his salary went into fulfilling her demands, Kaushal’s family members said.

Kaushal further writes in the note that he even sought police help and met the area ACP but they expressed their inability to act in the matter and asked him to settle it himself. Kaushal writes that police told him that the law favours the fairer sex and that they would have to lodge an FIR if the woman complained of rape.

On Wednesday, Kaushal learnt that Neha and Preeti were one and the same and that he had been taken for a ride. Kaushal allegedly refused to give her money that day. Then Preeti threatened to slash her wrists in his office. Kaushal was allegedly asked to leave and resolve the matter.

A distraught Kaushal came home, wrote a note and went to the railway tracks in Okhla where he committed suicide.

The railway police later recovered the note from the house and have now begun a probe. They suspect an organized gang of extortionists trapping people through phone calls. Inquest proceedings have been initiated. The note has been sent for handwriting analysis, police said.

