Man loots passengers by posing as cop, held in Mumbai

A woman railway constable helped her male colleagues arrest a man for looting passengers by posing as a railway ticket collector or a police officer.

Anwar Abdul Sheikh, a resident of Qureshi Nagar in Kurla (East), was arrested and gold ornaments worth Rs1.16 lakh recovered from him, said police.

Sheikh, a Class XII dropout, was used earlier working as a “bouncer” at a pub in Santa Cruz (West). He was drawing a meager salary. Taking advantage of his robust health, impressive personality and fluency in English, he decided to impersonate as a police officer or railway ticket collector and loot commuters. He was looting people for the past one and half year.

Describing his modus operandi, inspector BT Tidke said he used to stand at one corner of the station. After selecting his victim, he used to intercept the commuter by posing as a police officer. He used to threaten the commuter before fleeing with the ornaments and cash. The incident came to light when Sheikh looted gold ornaments worth Rs38,000 from Ramesh Bangude, a hardware engineer, last month.

Bangude lodged a complaint at the Wadala railway police station. While verifying the CCTV footage, the police found Sheikh looting ornaments from Bangude. The police then made several photocopies of Sheikh’s photographs and distributed it among the railway police personnel. On Friday, while patrolling at the Chembur railway police station, woman constable Sujata Bailume noticed a man travelling on a CST-bound local with similar descriptions of Sheikh and she immediately alerted head constable SG Mali’s team patrolling at Kurla station. As soon as the train arrived at Kurla, the police nabbed him.