Hyderabad Families Face Organised Extortion at Private Ceremonies
Organised groups in Hyderabad are extorting families during private ceremonies, demanding large sums while police classify complaints as social issues.
Dumtika Editorial
September 4, 2026 · 1 min read
(Image: Dumtika Editorial)
The Uninvited Levy
The pooja is done. The guests are seated. Then the demand arrives at the gate, and it isn't a request.
Across Hyderabad, families planning housewarmings, weddings and naming ceremonies describe the same sequence. Word of the event travels ahead of the invitations. Some of these are organised gangs — they work fixed territories, track upcoming functions, and turn up with a number already decided. ₹50,000 at the modest end. In the wealthier colonies, for a large wedding, as much as ₹5 lakh. The amount tracks the address and the occasion, not the blessing. It is a floor, not a ceiling.
Negotiation invites noise, and noise on an auspicious day, in front of relatives, is what nobody has budgeted for.
So most people pay. They pay because paying is faster than arguing, and because they have already worked out that no one is coming to help.
That last part is the real problem. Complaints at the station are heard as social matters rather than police ones. The advice is to settle it. No FIR, no record, nothing that would show a pattern if anyone bothered to look.
This is extortion, and there is a section of law for it. Until someone applies it, families will keep concluding the law is not for them — and people who reach that conclusion stop calling the police at all.
