Airport staffers arrested for confining, extorting money from flier

A cleaning staffer and security guard at Mumbai airport have been arrested for confining a passenger and demanding money by threatening to report her as a gold smuggler. The passenger had accidentally dropped a pouch with 300 grams of gold in the airport restroom.

MUMBAI: The Sahar police on Saturday arrested a female cleaning staffer and a private security guard deployed at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport for allegedly confining a flier and demanding ₹50,000 by threatening to report her as a gold smuggler. The woman told the police that she had accidentally dropped a gold dust pouch with 300 grams of gold in the toilet outside the airport on August 4.

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According to the Sahar police, the incident took place when the complainant, Jumana Sadriwala (55), a homemaker and wife of a garment seller from Vasai, returned from Sharjah with two bags of gold dust which she had converted from a gold idol.

The officers said that on her return to Mumbai after Moharram, Sadriwala went to the bathroom on Level P6 of the airport, where her car was waiting for her. She accidentally dropped one of her pouches in the restroom, which was spotted by the cleaning staffer identified as Snehal Gaikwad (27). Gaikwad then forced Sadriwala to dump the pouch in the garbage and threatened to call the security staff and report her if she did not.

Even after Sadriwala did as she was asked, Gaikwad called a female security guard and got her to search the flier. “The woman guard, after checking my purse, called two other guards who took me to Level P5, where my driver Vinod Yadav was waiting for me. When Yadav asked why we were being kept captive, the guards threatened to report us as smugglers,” Sadriwala told the police.

“Sadriwala told us that after the two guards took her and Yadav to the Level P5 parking lot, they demanded ₹50,000,” said a police officer. “They threatened Yadav when he questioned them. The victims were scared and after being told that they would be arrested for smuggling, they agreed to pay through an online transfer. The guards refused this but took Yadav’s ring before allowing them to leave. The entire episode was captured on CCTV.”

On August 5, Sadriwala and Yadav approached the Sahar police and filed a written complaint. Based on the complaint, DCP (Zone VIII) Dikshit Gedam ordered Sahar police senior inspector Sanjay Govilkar to retrieve the CCTV footage from the CISF, and based on the footage, identified and arrested the duo.

After studying the CCTV recording and recording statements, the police investigated the case and arrested Gaikwad and the security guard Dayanand Bhable (37) on Saturday. The police found that Gaikwad had taken the gold dust and converted it into a gold ring and chain soon after the incident.

Sadriwala found the gold dust pouch missing from the garbage bin when she, along with Yadav, returned to the toilet after they were let go after spending two hours in captivity.