Three former police officers from Tokyo and Kanagawa prefecture were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of demanding payment from a Tokyo company in return for silencing hecklers at a shareholders' meeting.

The three are Yukio Odagiri, 58, Nobuyoshi Sato, 53, and Hisao Saito, 58. Odagiri and Sato were formerly with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, while Saito was with the Kanagawa Prefectural Police, police said.

Investigators alleged the three learned that five people they knew who had acquired shares in Sumikura Industrial Co., a Tokyo builder of industrial machinery, were planning to attend the company's shareholders' assembly in June to disrupt the meeting.

The five belong to a rightwing extremist group, according to police.

The three former policemen contacted a director of Sumikura several times from late May through mid-June, saying they could prevent the rightists from attending the meeting if the company paid them 10 million yen, the investigators said.

Four of the rightists attended the Sumikura shareholders' meeting and two reportedly spoke there.

Police are investigating if the rightists were linked with those arrested and whether the three were involved in any other extortion cases.

Odagiri, a resident of Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward, claims to be a company president; Sato, from Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, says he is the head of a political organization; and Saito, also from Kawasaki, claims to be a senior managing director of an organization, the investigators said.

Sato was arrested in 1994 for accepting payment for telling an illegal gambling establishment that a police raid was imminent while serving as an officer at Akasaka Station in Tokyo. He was later convicted and dismissed.

Odagiri, from the same station, retired after the case came to light. He was not arrested or prosecuted over it.