Mumbai Police arrest five people for posing as fake cops, robbing lawyer of Rs 5 lakh in Khar

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The Khar police have arrested five people on Thursday who posed as Mumbai Crime Branch officers, abducted a lawyer in their car, and robbed him of Rs 5 lakh on September 8. According to the police, the accused are habitual offenders. They have been remanded in the custody of Mumbai Police until September 18.

The accused have been identified as Sandesh Maladkar, Vikas Surve, Praful More, Chetan Gowda, and A Yagnik.

On September 8 around 7 am, the lawyer had gone to deposit money into a Cash Deposit Machine (CDM) at Khar West when the five accused posed as crime branch officers and said that he was being taken into custody. They threatened to register a case against the lawyer and took him in a car. They then left him on the road after driving for a while and escaped with his Rs 5 lakh.

The lawyer then approched Khar Police, following which a team was formed under Rajtilak Roushan, the Deputy Commission of Police (DCP) of zone 9, and Senior Inspector Sanjeev Dhumal for investigating the case. The investigating team was led by Police Inspector (Crime) Vaibhav Katkar, and included Assistant Inspector and Investigating Officer Datta Kokane, and Constables Manoj Vaidya, Anand Nikam, Ajit Jadhav, Vishal Jadhav, Maruti Galve, and Kedarnath Shinde.

They launched an operation and found that one of the accused followed the car on a bike. Mumbai Police then traced the owner of the two-wheeler, who was identified as Maladkar's nephew.

Upon questioning him, Mumbai Police discovered that Maladkar was a resident of Kalyan.

During investigation, the police tracked the accused's mobile location, which kept changing from Mahad, to Khed, and then Chiplun in Maharashtra. After a point, Maladkar was untraceable. However, when the accused charged his phone at a roadside eatery, the police detected his location to Kankavli in Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra, a senior officer revealed. With the help of the local police there, Maladkar was apprehended in Achara in the same district. The remaining accused were later caught in Andheri.

The police have recovered ₹68,000 from the accused and stated that the remaining cash will be recovered soon.