Arrest of two thieves who conned senior citizens opens 13 cases

Navi Mumbai Two men, a 60-year-old and a 42-year-old, have been arrested by unit II of Navi Mumbai crime branch for robbing senior citizens on the road by engaging them in small talk and making away with their gold

Navi Mumbai

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Two men, a 60-year-old and a 42-year-old, have been arrested by unit II of Navi Mumbai crime branch for robbing senior citizens on the road by engaging them in small talk and making away with their gold. The accused often posed as police officers on patrolling duty and sometimes also posed as long-lost friend of the victim.

Identified as Naresh Vijaykumar Jaiswal (42) and Babu Erappa Manchekar (60), the police investigations indicated that they used the same modus operandi in 13 similar offences in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Mumbai Commissionerate jurisdictions. The police have also recovered gold jewellery worth ₹5.03 lakh from the accused.

“From a CCTV footage of a chain robbery case in Rabale, we identified the accused as they were history sheeters. Eventually we studied video footage of 69 locations in Navi Mumbai and finally got a clue that the accused stayed in Taloja and we accordingly nabbed them,” said Senior police inspector Ravindra Patil, unit II, crime branch.

It was found that the accused were arrested in 2003 and later released in 2016 after which the duo started committing the same crime again. They have carried out robberies in the jurisdictions of Vashi, Turbhe, Koparkhairne, Nerul, Rabale police stations in Navi Mumbai, Matunga, Sion and Kanjurmarg police stations in Mumbai and Mahatma Phule police station in Thane.

At times, the accused would pose as police officers and randomly stop senior citizens asking them to remove their ornaments and keep them in their pocket on the pretext that that few thieves were on the loose in the area and they were hunting them. Then, the accused, on the pretext of helping them remove the ornament, would trick them and get away with the ornament.

In another modus, Manchekar, who is himself a senior citizen, would approach any random senior citizen and start chatting as if he knows them. He would convince the person that they had met many years back at common friend’s place and would then discuss about the ornament the person would be wearing and on the pretext of having a closer look at the ornament, he would trick the victim and make away with the ornament.