Mumbai: Four men, residents of Tamil Nadu, were arrested on Sunday for allegedly pretending to be deaf and speech-disabled persons to seek monetary help and committing thefts by fraudulent means.
The quartet, suspected to be committing thefts in the city for 10 years, were arrested from a lodge in Dharavi, where they resided by disguising themselves as cloth traders.
In an incident on Friday, a female assistant manager, working with the Bank of Maharashtra, realised that her iPhone worth ₹40,000, was missing from her desk. The woman tracked her phone to Dharavi, through a mobile tracking app and informed the cops about the incident. Police officers then tracked the gang members in CCTV footage of railway stations, and found them getting off at Matunga.
The woman told the police that she saw a man, wandering in the bank, clutching a paper in his hand, she assumed that he was a customer. She then went to the bathroom, when she returned, her mobile was missing from her desk.
“We tracked the man to a lodge in Dharavi. The lodge staff informed us that they knew him (the alleged thief) for the past 10 years, as he had been staying there during his visits to Mumbai, pretending to be a cloth trader from Tamil Nadu,” said an officer from Malad police station.
The officers entered the room where Wediwel Bhoyar (36) had been staying and learnt that he shared the room with his three brothers – Manjunath Bhoyar, Govindswami Bhoyar, and Mahaviran Bhoyar. The police detained all four of them and recovered the stolen mobile phone from Bhoyar, who had hidden it in his luggage.
“Several cases of fraud are registered against them in Mumbai, as well as in Tamil Nadu,” shared a police officer. Cops also shared that all members of the gang were found in possession of a certificate, declaring themselves as deaf and speech-disabled and that they needed monetary donations.
The men also carried forms containing columns for filing names of donors and the sum donated. “With this certificate, the gang members gained access to the government buildings, banks, and other institutions in the city, and used the certificates to plead innocence, when they got caught doing something,” said the police officer.
The four men were produced before a metropolitan magistrate court on Monday and remanded to police custody for four days.