Three policemen ran a fake police station in Bareilly city for a whole year, locking people up on false charges and demanding a ransom.

Their greed caused their downfall on Friday when the son of their latest victim, hit with a second ransom demand immediately after settling the first, got in touch with senior officers.

Uttar Pradesh police sources said the accused policemen, deployed at the Kasba outpost, had grabbed a portion of a rubber factory in the area and given it the semblance of a police station, complete with a fake lockup. They carried on their kidnap-and-ransom racket for a year, the sources added.

On Friday, the trio — sub-inspector Balbir Singh and constables Himanshu Tomar and Mohit Kumar — allegedly barged into the home of a farmer in Bhitaura village and accused them of possessing drugs and illegal firearms.

They placed an illegal pistol on a chair beside the farmer’s son and shot a video to "prove" their charges, the farmer told local reporters on Saturday, asking not to be named.

"Singh said I was selling illegal drugs and weapons from my home. They ransacked the house, took me to the rubber factory and put me in a lockup. We didn’t realise that it wasn’t a real police station," the farmer said.

"They demanded ₹2 lakh from my family, which was given to them within a few hours. But they didn’t release me and demanded more. Then my son mustered the courage to approach senior officers."

Senior superintendent of police Anurag Arya told reporters in Bareilly, 260km north of Lucknow, that the three accused had gone into hiding.

"We received information yesterday (Friday) evening that the officer-in-charge of Kasba chawki under Fatehganj police station had detained someone and was demanding money from him. I sent a circle officer to inquire about it," he said.

"The circle officer met the detained person and took his statement. We filed a case against the chawki-in-charge and two other policemen after it was confirmed they were involved in the crime."

Arya said the trio had been suspended and booked for multiple criminal offences including trespassing, kidnapping, wrongful confinement, threatening and demanding valuables, voluntarily causing hurt, criminal intimidation, and intentional insult.

A policeman, seeking anonymity, said Uttarakhand police had a few months ago told their Uttar Pradesh counterparts that sub-inspector Singh was smuggling heroin between the two states.

"The Uttarakhand police had chased him in a car but failed to catch him red-handed. However, no inquiry was conducted against him at the time," the policeman told reporters in Bareilly.