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Duo posing as cops cons three more women in Panchkula
Switch women’s gold ornaments with fake jewellery after offering them help to safeguard it; separate FIRs lodged for theft, cheating, personating a public servant and criminal breach of trust
Two men masquerading as cops conned three more women in the city within one hour on Friday and made off with their gold ornaments after handing them imitation jewellery.
The first woman to be targeted is Meena Singla, 30, of Sector 21.
She told the police that she was taking a walk near her sector’s community centre around 7.25 am. Two men standing nearby, one of them wearing a khaki cap, approached her and identified themselves as cops.
They alerted her that she cannot be wearing gold chain and bangles, as there was a restriction on it. They asked her to hand over the jewellery that they will put in a safe packet. She followed the instructions and the accused after wrapping her ornaments in a paper, tied it up with her dupatta, before leaving on a motorcycle.
On unwrapping the packet later, she was shocked to find imitation jewellery.
Five minutes later, Saroj Bala, 57, of Sector 6, lost her gold bangle through the same modus operandi around 7.30 am. In her complaint to police, she said she was out for a morning walk near the Sector 6 market, when a man approached her. Claiming that he was a cop, he asked her to accompany him to meet his senior, who was standing nearby.
Bala was also asked to asked to remove her gold bangle. So she took it off and tried to tie it up with her dupatta, when the duo offered to do it for her and left on their motorcycle. Bala also realised later, it was fake jewellery, not her bangle, that was tied to her dupatta.
Within an hour, Suman Oberoi, 60, of Sector 8, was approached by a man near Shiv Mandir in Sector 9 around 8.30 am. He also claimed to be a cop and took her to his senior. As the duo advised her to safeguard her gold bangles, she put them in a utensil that she was carrying with her. But one of the men shouted at her to hand over the bangles to him. Alarmed, she complied and he wrapped the bangles in a paper, before handing them to her.
After some time, she realised she was given imitation bangles, but the men had already left on a motorcycle parked at some distance.
While in Singla’s case, police have lodged an FIR under Sections 379 (theft) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at the Sector 5 police station, in the other two cases, separate FIRs under Sections 170 (personating a public servant), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC were registered at the Sector 7 police station. Police are scanning CCTV footage to trace the accused.
Due to the same modus operandi, police suspect the thefts to be the handiwork of notorious “Irani gang” that targets women and senior citizens by posing as police personnel.
The well-organised gang has been active in Chandigarh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi NCR.
