Mumbai: Woman lures bag thief back with a 'bribe'

Mumbai: Instead of waiting for cops to retrieve her valuables for her, a 39-year-old woman who had her bag stolen, devised a clever ruse to lure the thief into a trap. She simply called the accused on her phone that he had stolen, and offered him Rs 1,000 in exchange for her stolen documents. She then roped in the police and tipped them off about the meeting, leading to his arrest.

The accused is now in custody of CST Government Railway Police (GRP) and is said to have several cases of snatching registered against him. According to the police, on July 7, Deena Jain, a housewife, had gone to Byculla station to make reservations for a trip to Gujarat. “She sat down while in queue, and gradually dozed off. When she woke up, her purse was missing,” said Surendra Deshmukh, senior police inspector of police, CST GRP.

Jain asked others in the queue if they had seen any suspicious looking persons approach her while she was napping. “Her purse had some cash, her mobile phone and her gold necklace. Before lodging a complaint with the CST GRP, she decided to try her luck. She called up on her own number and surprisingly, the bag thief answered the phone. She then lied to the thief that the necklace was a fake. She urged him to keep the stolen cash and requested that he return her documents and cards. She even promised to pay him Rs 1,000 for them,” said Anil Karekar, police sub-inspector of CST GRP. The greedy thief readily agreed to the deal.

It is then that Jain lodged a complaint with the CST GRP and informed them that the accused was coming to Byculla station to ‘return’ the documents. The CST GRP officers then started patrolling the station in plain clothes. “When the accused came to return the documents, our police staff nabbed him. During interrogations, we learnt that the name of the 19-year-old is Altaf Ansar Qureshi and that he is a resident of Byculla,” said Deshmukh.

The police have recovered Jain’s gold necklace, cash worth Rs 500 and her mobile phone. “Jain showed her presence of mind which helped us to nab the accused,” said Karekar.