he Navi Mumbai police have arrested a gang of five who have allegedly committed at least 100 offences in the last two years, ‘buying’ expensive cell phones and other electronic goods in instalments using forged papers.
The Vashi police began investigations after the management of Inorbit Mall in Vashi approached the police with a complaint against the accused.
An officer with the Vashi police said, “A group of five men had visited an electronics store in the mall and purchased four cell phones on December 28 last year, opting to pay in instalments. The payment was processed through a personal finance company, which sanctioned a loan of Rs 1.66 lakh for the phones, to be paid in monthly instalments. When not a single instalment was paid after three months and the accused could not be reached, they approached us.”
The police, along with the fraud investigation unit of the finance company, verified the identity papers submitted by the accused while obtaining the loan, and found that all the addresses in the documents were bogus. The police, based on the photographs submitted by the accused, found that they had similarly ‘bought’ electronic goods like televisions sets, air conditioners, refrigerators and cell phones in several stores in Navi Mumbai and Thane.
“Two of the accused, identified as Madhukar Raste (35) and Naresh Shewale (34), were arrested in Vashi last week. Their interrogation led us to three other accused, identified as Ganesh Jadhav, Sunil Pote and Dinesh Shetty, who would help with preparation of bogus documents. We have seized 30 PAN cards, eight voter ID cards, eight driving licences, nine bank passbooks, all of them bogus, and laptops, scanners and printers from their houses,” the officer said. Pote used to be in the construction business earlier but suffered losses, after which he couldn’t pay back a large group of people who had invested in houses in one of his projects.
According to officials, the accused have confessed to have committed at least 100 such crimes in the last two years in cities like Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan and Navi Mumbai. One more accused, identified as Sameer Bhujbal, is on the run.
The gang members used to buy expensive electronic goods in instalments using forged papers