Mumbai:
Four con men were arrested by the Marine Drive police on Friday. They would distract drivers of parked four-wheelers by throwing currency notes of Rs 500 or Rs 100 denominations on the road and then decamp with laptops, mobile phones or cash kept in the car.
"Balan Servai, 35, Kartik Servai 19, Kumaran Servai, 27 and Fakhruddhin Sheikh, 30, have been arrested," said API Pratap Jadhav. The police are yet to recover the stolen goods.
Jadhav said that with this gang's arrest, they have solved four such cases that took place in their jurisdiction since May. Valuables worth Rs6 lakh have been stolen in these four cases. The police said at least 10 cases of similar nature have been registered at Marine Drive, Azad Maidan and MRA Marg police stations in past six months.
Around 2 pm on May 25, Sameer Chavan, chauffeur of a Honda Accord belonging to businessman Satish Chinoy, parked the car on Dinshaw Vaccha Road at Churchgate and began cleaning its window screen. A youth approached him and told him in that a Rs100 note had fallen from his pocket. As Chavan bent down to pick it up, another member of the gang picked up Chinoy's bag containing a laptop, a mobile phone, a net connection card and a Vodafone SIM card collectively valued at Rs1.14 lakh and fled. Chavan then lodged a complaint with the police.
On October 10, Santosh Kavthalkar, chauffeur of a Mar-uti car was conned. Around 2.15pm on Veer Nariman Road at Churchgate, Kavthalkar was sitting in the car. Kartik, approached him and told him that a Rs100 note had fallen on the ground. When Kavthalkar came out of the car to pick it up, Kartik, Kumaran and Balan, fled with a bag that had Rs1.80 lakh and a laptop.
The police said Servai is the leader. A native of Tamil Nadu, he was arrested by the Solapur police in several bag-lifting cases. He was operating in South Mumbai for two years.
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