Five arrested for robbing lawyer by posing as Crime Branch officers

MUMBAI: The Khar police have arrested five persons who allegedly posed as crime branch officers and robbed a lawyer of ₹5 lakh under the pretext of investigation. The incident occurred on the morning of September 8, when the complainant, Tausif Shaikh, 37, went to deposit ₹5.70 lakh at an ATM kiosk in Khar.
Three men claiming to be from the crime branch forced Shaikh to get into their car. Once he was seated inside, they inspected his bag and questioned him where he got the cash from. After driving around for about 1 km, under the guise of taking him to a police station, they forced him to get out of the car and sped away with the bag containing the cash.
Shaikh then informed his brother about the incident and the two approached the Khar police station where a case was registered against three unknown persons.
Shaikh is a lawyer by profession and lives in Bandra. His family is in tourism business and book railway and air tickets. The money he was carrying was given to him by his family to deposit in their business account through ATM. Shaikh deposited 70,000 cash in the account and was carrying the rest of the money with him when the accused accosted him, said a police officer. He also said that the car used in the crime was hired on rent. “The accused left the car in Mumbai and one of them, Sandesh Maladkar, fled to his native place in Sindhudurg.”
After registering the case, police checked CCTV footage of the crime scene and nearby areas. “Based on the footage, technical analysis and inputs provided by informants, Maladkar was detained in Sindhudurg district and brought to the city for interrogation. After his interrogation, the remaining four were arrested from a hotel in Andheri,” said deputy commissioner of police, Raj Tilak Roshan.
During investigation, the police came to know that there was one more accused, who had given a tip-off, who is still at large.
Police also found out that two of the arrested five have criminal past, with cases registered against them in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane, for duping people using similar modus operandi. Based on their criminal past, section 111 (organised crime) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita was added to the case.
The arrested accused are identified as Sandesh Dattaram Maladkar, 51, Prafulla Shankar More, 46, Vikas Sridhar Surve, 39, Chetan Kempe Gowda, 34, and Darshan Mahesh Yagnik, 43. Maladkar is a resident of Malwan in Sindhudurg district whereas More is a resident of Mira Road, and the three others are from Santacruz East.
Police officials said eight cases are registered against Sandesh Dattaram Maladkar at Bhoiwada, Rabale, Manpada, Belapur, Khandeshwar police stations and an extortion case at the Malad police station, a kidnapping and impersonation case in Dahisar, and cheating and impersonation case at Navghar police station.
Two cases are registered against Prafulla More in Mira Road and Dahisar, where he was booked for cheating, forgery and kidnapping.
The arrested accused were produced in the court which remanded them to police custody up to September 18.