This Article is From May 05, 2010

Roommate steals Rs 65,000, passport from city techie

Bangalore: People staying in paying guest (PG) accommodations often have no choice but to trust the strangers they share the flat with.

For a techie in the city, however, doing so resulted in a loss of Rs 65,000, his credit cards and his passport.

25-year-old Srikanth Reddy N, a software engineer with IBM, has been staying as a paying guest at Service Hill on Nagwara main road in Bangalore and was sharing the room with Madhura alias Abhi, who claimed to be a doctor working in a city-based hospital.

On April 30, Madhura suddenly vacated the room while Reddy was at work. When Reddy came back home, he noticed that two of his credit cards and his passport were missing.

He tried to get the cards blocked from the respective banks, (ICICI bank and Citibank) but it was already too late.

The customer service personnel told him that his card was swiped to purchase gold jewellery worth around Rs 65,000 at a store at the Bangalore International Airport.

Madhura had also allegedly produced Reddy's passport, replacing the photograph with his own, as identity proof during the purchase.

In his complaint to the KG Halli police on Sunday, Reddy has alleged that the staff did not verify his signature.

"Madhura might have flown out of the city. We are trying to get hold of the records," said a police officer from the KG Halli police station.
.