PhD holder, engineer among 4 arrested for ₹5.15 cr heist

The arrested accused include Murgandan Abhimanyu, 46, the alleged mastermind of the heist who holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the social sciences and his brother Balprabhu Shanmugam, 39, an electrical engineer, said police officials

MUMBAI: The Mira Bhayander – Vasai Virar (MBVV) police on Monday arrested four members of a Dharavi-based gang for allegedly impersonating policemen, kidnapping three persons and robbing them of ₹5.15 crore on March 17. The arrested accused include Murgandan Abhimanyu, 46, the alleged mastermind of the heist who holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the social sciences and his brother Balprabhu Shanmugam, 39, an electrical engineer, said police officials.

PhD holder, engineer among 4 arrested for ₹5.15 cr heist

Abhimanyu, who was arrested in 2007 on murder charges and released on bail in 2022, was famous in Dharavi as Murugan Anna; some residents also referred to him as ‘don’. An honorary PhD holder, he preferred to call himself a social worker and ran the South Welfare Charitable Sanstha, which undertook several charitable initiatives in Dharavi such as running a free dialysis programme.

“Abhimanyu met several criminals while in jail and gradually drifted towards dacoity with the help of his brother, who is an engineer,” said a police officer from the MBVV police drime branch. In 2023, after he was released from jail, he and his brother allegedly committed a similar dacoity within the limits of LT Marg police station. “We are gathering more information about that case,” the police officer added.

According to the police, the March 3 heist occurred at around 9pm, when the complainant Shravan Shankar Thakur, 24, and his associate Akshay Thakur were travelling from Surat to Mumbai in their Hyundai Creta car with money belonging to a vegetable trader from Sikkim. As an angadiya service provider, Shravan Thakur often transports large sums of cash of behalf of traders between Gujarat and Mumbai.

Thakur’s driver Babu Swami, 48, tipped off Abhimanyu about the cash being transported by his employer, and the accused were following the victim in a WagonR car from Surat, said officials. When Thakur’s car was about 300 meters short of the Virar toll plaza, Swami claimed he was feeling sleepy and stopped the car beside the highway to splash water on his face.

“As soon Swami got out of the car, the WagonR intercepted them. Five men disembarked from the WagonR, introduced themselves as policemen flashing their fake ID cards and forced Shravan and Akshay Thakur to get off,” said Avinash Ambure, deputy commissioner of police (crime branch).

Three of the accused then asked Swami and Akshay Thakur to get inside the WagonR, while the two other accused forced Shravan Thakur inside his Creta and snatched his mobile phone and the bag containing cash. The accused drove off towards Vasai thereafter, dropping Shravan and Akshay Thakur and Swami a few kilometres away from each other along the way, said police officials. The two accused travelling by the Creta abandoned the vehicle near the Virar railway station and took a train to return to their homes in Dharavi, while thye other two gang members drove back to Dharavi in their Wagon R. Abhimanyu split up the money between all five gang members after they reassembled in Dharavi, the officials added.

Subsequently, the Thakurs and Swami complained about the incident at the Mandvi police station, where an FIR was registered against unidentified accused for impersonation and cheating. The police identified, tracked down and arrested Abhimanyu and two of his associates who planned the robbery using CCTV footage and mobile data records of Swami, who confessed to hatching the plan for the robbery with Abhimanyu. Swami was the fourth accused to be arrested in the case, while the persons who carried out the robbery are absconding, said police officials.

The police have recovered ₹4.87 crore from the accused. They are trying to ascertain if the money being transported by Thakur was legal and have written to the Income Tax department about the same, said officials.