Mumbai Crime: Expensive mobile phone lands auto driver in jail

A suspicious cop takes him in for questioning, finds two high-end laptops with him, too

An expensive mobile phone in the hands of an autorickshaw driver alarmed a policeman, who brought him to Vile Parle police station for questioning and resulted in the recovery of two laptops from his possession. Vijay Satyanarayan Singh, 36, claimed he had found the mobile phone on the road two years back, while the laptops belonged to a woman who had forgotten them in his autorickshaw in February. The police arrested Singh on Friday and booked him under sections of the CrPC and Bombay Police Act.

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The police are trying to track down the owner of the mobile phone with the help of the cyber cell. They have, however, tracked down the woman who owns the laptops. A senior officer told mid-day that 45-year-old Bindu Suresh Pillai, a senior executive at an event management company at BKC, lost her bag containing two laptops while returning home to Mulund on February 2. "One laptop belonged to her while the other was given to her by her firm," the officer said.

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Pillai told mid-day, "I boarded an autorickshaw from BKC to Mulund and since the laptop bag was heavy, I put it behind the seat. Usually, I keep my laptops at office but as it was a Saturday and I had to complete work backlog, I carried them with me. But, I forgot to take the bag on reaching home." "When I realised what had happened, I checked the CCTV footage of my building to get the registration number of the vehicle but it was illegible due to darkness. I had contacted the union of autorickshaw drivers but all my efforts were futile," she added.

Pillai then registered a complaint at Navghar police station on February 4. She even had to pay 40,000 to her employer for misplacing official property. "Two days ago, I received a call from the Mumbai police. It was a moment of extreme joy for me as I had lost all hope," said Pillai, who reached Vile Parle police station along with her friend and met PSI Pravin Ghadge, the officer who had nabbed Singh. Singh had deleted all the data from both the laptops. Ghadge said, "Singh had booked a ticket to his hometown in Uttar Pradesh. But, we arrested him on April 5, when he had planned to leave the city."

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