Mumbai: Couple goes in search of car after Kurla cops show no interest

CCTV grab of the vehicle's number plate

Disheartened by the lack of interest shown by the police in tracing their precious car, a 52-year-old man and his 45-year-old wife have embarked on their own search of the robbers. Janmohammad Fakirmohammed Sayyed, a Kurla resident and wife Shabana, are in Gujarat for the past nine days in search of their seven-seater car that is also their source of livelihood.

The car was stolen 10 days ago from Kurla's LBS Marg, where Sayyed always parks his car. He has alleged that rather than helping him find his car, the cops have only kept passing the buck saying they are yet to get permission from their superiors to investigate.

Sayyed had bought the Eeco car two years ago for personal use and to ferry schoolchildren. "Like every day, I parked my car near Bank of Maharashtra on LBS Road, Kurla, late in the night on February 18. The next morning, when I went to wash my car, it wasn't there. I asked everyone around, but nobody had a clue. I rushed to Kurla police station," Sayyed said.

Janmohammad Sayyed

According to Sayyed, the cops started questioning him instead, demanding to know why did he had parked his vehicle on the road every day. They also kept asking him if he had lost the keys to the car, and he had to repeatedly tell them he had both sets with him. "They wasted all of February 18 and 19. When I asked them when they would start the investigation, they said they had not got permission to go outstation for investigation," Sayyed said.

That's when the family decided to search for the vehicle themselves. "The car is our livelihood, what we will do without it. That's why I told my husband we should go look for it ourselves," Shabana said.

"We started with the toll nakas, where we found that vehicle has gone through Dahisar toll naka on the same night it had been stolen. We rented a car and started tracing the route of the vehicle," she added.

The couple went to Wapi, Bharuch and Vadodara toll naka and found that the vehicle had passed through all of them. "We can see our car passing through the nakas. All the employees at the nakas helped us when we told them that we were looking for our stolen car. Unfortunately, we lost the car trail between Anand and Bharuch. We are now taking then help of locals to get some clue of the car," Sayyed said. "We have spent R15,000 till now, I don't know how long I can continue this search," Sayyed said.

When contacted, Kurla
Senior Police Inspector Dattatray Shinde said, "We are conducting an investigation and did whatever we could. But, if the complainant isn't happy with the investigation or its pace, we can't do anything about it."

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