Mumbai: Citing rising thefts in locals, court jails man for two years for stealing cellphone

According to the prosecution, Swapnil Bhosekar, a resident of Bhayander and an employee of a cyber technology company, had boarded a train for Thane from Dadar on the central line of the suburban train network at around 6.40 am on April 2, 2017. He was traveling in the general compartment, next to the motorman’s cabin. Since it was a non-peak hour, there were hardly four-five other passengers in the train.

During his deposition, Bhosekar told the court that he was looking at the M-Indicator application on his phone, for train timings, when the passenger sitting across him snatched his phone and jumped out on Platform number 1 at Vidyavihar station, where the train had halted. Bhosekar told the court that he, too, had jumped out of the train to chase the accused and sustained a fracture in his left hand.

Other passengers and patrolling police, meanwhile, paid attention to the commotion and apprehended the accused. An FIR was registered at Kurla railway police station. The police also booked the accused under Section 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) IPC, claiming that the victim could have lost his life in the incident. The court, however, said there was not sufficient evidence to convict the accused on the charge since the prosecution had not shown that he had assaulted or struck the victim, causing him to fall and sustain an injury. It also observed that the investigating officer had said the spot where the incident took place did not have any CCTV cameras.

The court also dismissed the defence’s plea that the accused was falsely implicated. “It is worth to note that the informant PW1 (Bhosekar) is a common man who used to travel daily from Bhayander to Thane by the local train for attending his duty, there was no reason he would falsely implicate the accused in the crime,” the court observed.