Delhi gang that robbed Yemeni medical tourists in Pune finally nabbed

According to the police, the latest incident took place at Ashirwad Chowk in Kondhwa on the afternoon of February 8, when a 52-year-old Yemeni national was targeted. Around 4.30 pm on February 8, a car approached him from behind when he was passing from Ashirwad Chowk. A man got out of the car, identified himself as a police officer, and started talking to the Yemeni national in Arabic. On the pretext of checking his documents and what he carried, the suspect allegedly took the victim’s identity, documents, and foreign and Indian currency.

The suspect started sniffing these objects with their nose, saying he was checking them. All of a sudden, he got into the car and fled from the scene before the victim could react. The suspect allegedly decamped with Saudi riyal, US dollars, and Indian rupees, totalling a total equivalent value of Rs 4.79 lakh. In September last year, a 47-year-old Yemen national was identically cheated of $4,000.

A team from the Kondhwa police station was probing various leads available in these cases. The team zeroed in on a car used in the February 8 case. It traced the trail of this car by carefully examining footage from over 600 CCTV cameras. The probe led police to a beach resort in Daman, where the suspects stayed after they fled Pune on February 8. Over the last five days, the police arrested four suspects from Delhi and their involvement in both cases has come to light.

The arrested suspects have been identified as Sikandar Ali Khan, 46; Kareem Feroz Khan, 29; Irfan Hussain Hashmi, 44; and Mehboob Abdul Khan, 59; all residents of Jangpura in South Delhi. The police recovered from them the foreign currency robbed in both cases.

The investigation team is also probing whether the same set of suspects were involved in two more identical cases: one from September last year in which a 32-year-old Yemeni national was cheated of $1,100 in Pune Camp and a 58-year-old Yemen national of $4,000 in Kondhwa in April last year.

“Many Yemen nationals and citizens from other West Asian countries who come to Pune for medical treatment, stay in the Kondhwa area along with their families. Many of them stay here for longer periods during their treatments. We have reasons to believe that suspects were receiving specific information on when to target the victims, as in when they would be carrying large amounts of cash with them. At this stage, we are probing the source of the information they were receiving.” said an officer part of the probe.