Hyderabad: A person who committed a series of six offences in five hours on October 22 in the city was arrested by the Special Task Force of the Cyberabad Police Commissioner on Monday.
Waseem Abbas Siraj, 34, resident of Thane district in Maharashtra tricked women running a store on their own into handing him their gold ornaments to conduct a puja and then disappeared with the ornaments worth Rs 11 lakh altogether.
Two other men also involved in the crimes were arrested earlier by the Cyberabad Police and the PD Act was invoked against them.
They were identified as Jai Kumar Rajak, 37, resident of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, and Niyaz Mohd Khan, 44, resident of Rajendranagar mandal and native of Rajasthan. A third man, Javeed Baali from Mumbai, was reportedly absconding.
Police Commissioner of Cyberabad, V.C. Sajjanar said that the gang would identify women wearing heavy gold ornaments who ran shops in isolated places.
“One of the gang members would approach the victim as a customer to purchase some articles like coconut, biscuit packet, etc. after which he would inform her that he is interested in offering prayers and to contribute some money to the poor and also to the nearby temple.”
They would request the victim to hand over the offerings along with a bag containing coconut, flowers, agarbatti, kumkum, haldi etc.
“When the woman accepts it, they ask her to touch the bag with gold ornaments citing religious reasons and convince her to remove the ornaments and pretended to place it in the bag but would divert her attention and flee with the jewellery,” Mr Sajjanar explained.
Following a series of complaints of this nature a special team was formed to nab the men responsible.
The Special Task Force team visited the places where the offence took place to gather evidence. Jai Kumar and Niyaz Mohd were caught on November 5.
Based on information that Waseem Abbas Siraj was living in a room rented by Niyaz Mohd at Rajeev Gruhakalpa in Shamshabad, the police team apprehended him on Monday and recovered all the stolen gold ornaments from his possession.
“Waseem has been arrested six times by the Maharashtra and Karnataka police and is a most wanted criminal. After release from jail in November 2017, he and his associates committed 58 offences of robbery, bank cheating, and stealing by diverting attention in Mumbai, Thane, Varanasi, Allahabad and Patna,” the police commissioner said.
