Mumbai: A 24-year-old Kenyan citizen traveling from Doha to Mumbai to attend a relative’s wedding on Monday lost 1,000 USD and Rs10,000 at the Mumbai International Airport’s parking lot.
The victim, a civil engineering student, who is Gujarati by ethnicity, landed at the airport on Monday afternoon and was standing at parking spot - P4 with two luggages along with a small bag containing cash. He missed the bag when he started moving towards a cab, but returned to the spot when he realised he had left it behind. When he did not find it, he alerted the airport authorities, who informed the Sahar Police.
“We checked the CCTV footage of the parking lot, but most were blurred, so we could not recognize the faces of the suspects. However, going by their uniforms and questioning people nearby, we have narrowed down to three people. They had fled the scene soon after the theft,” said a police officer.
The victim lodged a formal complaint against three unknown persons with the Sahar Police who subsequently initiated an investigation. Two of the suspects were nabbed, while the third had fled the city, the police confirmed.
The suspects have been identified as Mohammad Rais Quraishi, Rajpoot Kumar, and Haresh Prabhakar Patil, all working as ground staff at the airport and managed by a private security agency.
The one absconding, Rajpoot Kumar, is suspected to have gone to his native place in Uttar Pradesh with all the US dollars. No arrests have been made in the case yet, but the possibility of arrests by Wednesday is high, the police confirmed.
A case has been registered against the three under sections 379 (punishment for theft) and 34 (common intent) of the Indian Penal Code.
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