Cops posing as rickshaw drivers catch two auto stealers red-handed

Mumbai: Disguised as auto drivers, the MHB Colony police for days kept a watch at various auto stands in Borivali and Kandivali and in the early hours of Thursday, arrested two men, who stole autorickshaws from the city and sold them

Mumbai: Disguised as auto drivers, the MHB Colony police for days kept a watch at various auto stands in Borivali and Kandivali and in the early hours of Thursday, arrested two men, who stole autorickshaws from the city and sold them.

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The police officers said that in January 2023, the two accused had robbed 17 rickshaws from various parts of Mumbai including, Juhu, Kandivali, Andheri, Bandra etc.

According to the MHB police, the accused have been identified as Bhuchanna Lingapalli and Abdul Aziz Momin and the latter was caught red-handed from the auto stand near Pooja building in Charkop, Kandivali west.

Sudhir Kudalkar, senior police inspector of MHB Colony police station, said that on January 24, they had received a complaint from Abhimanyu Yadav (38) that his auto rickshaw was stolen from Dahisar when he had gone for lunch.

The police registered a case of theft and began scanning the CCTVs of the vicinity. They saw Yadav’s rickshaw being taken towards the Western Express Highway but after that they did not find the rickshaw on any other CCTV footage.

“When we did not get any lead, we scanned all the CCTV recordings of places where rickshaws had been robbed in the past three months. There were more than 600 CCTV camera recordings,” said Kudalkar.

The police then identified the robber from a CCTV recording of Kandivali and after following the trail of the robber’s movements, the police found that he stayed somewhere is Charkop.

“For days, two of our police officers disguised themselves as auto drivers, they had even borrowed the drivers’ badges, and kept watch on two auto stands in Charkop,” said Kudalkar.

The police arrested Momin as soon as he approached a rickshaw, which was parked and tried starting it. On questioning he revealed the name of his partner and confessed to have robbed 17 autos in January. The two will be presented before the court on Friday.