Mumbai Crime: Man runs away with woman's diamond ring on first date

Dating Website Alert! Accused, who called himself Aryan Patel, befriends woman, who is a Dadar resident, on a matrimonial website. But then runs away with her diamond ring on their very first meeting

Illustrations/Ravi Jadhav

It went from first date jitters to first date horror for this Dadar resident, after a man, whom she had befriended on a matrimonial site nearly a year ago and met on Tuesday for the first time, ran away with her diamond ring. The Khar police are investigating the incident, which happened at a Carter Road coffee shop.

In her complaint to the police, the woman said that the two had come in contact on a matrimonial site and been in touch through social media, messages and calls for one year before finally deciding to meet.

(T)ring, (t)ring...
According to the police, the incident happened on Tuesday evening, when the woman and the man, who had introduced himself as Aryan Patel, met at the café. In the middle of the conversation, Patel spotted a diamond ring on the woman's finger and gushed about how beautiful it was, asking her if he could see it. The woman obliged. As he was allegedly pretending to scrutinise and admire it, his mobile phone rang and he excused himself in a hurry, saying he needed to take the call and would be back in a few minutes, surreptitiously taking the ring with him.

The complainant waited for him for half an hour. When he didn't turn up, she stepped outside the coffee shop to look around for him but didn't see him anywhere. Panicking, she walked a few metres in the vicinity to search for him, but he was nowhere to be seen. She then approached the Khar police and lodged a complaint against him.

PoliceSpeak
An officer with the Khar police said, "Based on the woman's complaint, an FIR was filed on Wednesday morning under section 379 (theft) of the Indian Penal Code. We are in the process of scanning footage from the CCTV cameras in the area to identify the accused and catch him."

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