Hotel manager with sedan breaks into roadside stall, steals cigarettes in Mumbai

The 35-year-old manager with a hotel management company was arrested on Thursday

When an owner found cigarettes stolen from his roadside paan stall, he least expected a sedan driving, hotel manager to be the suspect. A 35-year-old manager with a hotel management company was arrested on Thursday for breaking into the stall and stealing cigarettes.

On February 3, Jay Singh Bagal was returning home in his Toyota Etios on Rani Sati Marg in Malad (East) around 2.30 am.

Bagal had run out of cigarettes and was looking for shops when he stumbled upon a paan shop along the road. The shop was closed but that did not deter Bagal. He stopped his car outside the stall and took out a wrench from his car used to remove tyres.

“He used the wrench and broke the lock of the stall. After that, he took a plastic bag from his car and collected the cigarette boxes from the stall. CCTV footage showed us that a car was outside the shop at the time of the theft,” said Rajaram Vhanmane, senior inspector at Dindoshi police station.

The police traced the vehicle’s registration number to Madhya Pradesh, following which they contacted the RTO officials who led them to Bagal. The accused, an MBA graduate, has a high-paying job as a manager and lives in a popular high-rise apartment in Kurar with his family.

While he drove away from the shop with the stolen packets, he only kept Marlboro cigarettes and threw away the rest. The police have recovered the stolen cigarettes and seized his car.