3 held for conning senior citizens by posing as cops

The Mumbai Police Crime Branch have arrested three members of a gang reportedly called ‘Bol Bachan’ who would pose as policemen or good Samaritans and dupe elderly pedestrians of their valuables on various pretexts. Officials of the Crime Branch Unit 7 said that the trio have admitted to having committed 113 such cases in Mumbai,Navi Mumbai and Thane and 80 of these cases are from Mumbai.

“We have arrested Santosh Kishem Patwa,a Ghatkopar resident,Naved Shakil Ahmed and Ganesh Patil from Koparkhairane on Monday and have recovered valuables worth Rs 90,000 from them in one of the cases. The kingpin of the gang named Kiran Ramniklal Shah is absconding but will be nabbed soon,” said additional commissioner of police (crime branch) Deven Bharti.

The gang has reportedly been functioning for the past few years and its members were arrested in October 2008. After their release later,they begun functioning again from the beginning of 2009,the crime branch officials said. “They would target senior citizens on the roads by conjuring up various scenarios to cheat them into handing over their ornaments. They would claim that a police raid is in progress and ask the victims to remove their ornaments and keep them inside,or invoke greed by asking them to do the same by claiming that a rich man was distributing clothes and would give the victims more if they appear poor. They had a list of such scenarios and would use them depending on the victim,” said Bharti.