Man catches thief off guard in Mumbai

A physically disabled businessman travelling in a MSRTC bus from Swarget in Pune to Nehru Nagar in Kurla on Sunday night, caught a co-passenger who tried to drug him and attempted to rob his gold chain using a cutter.

“Umesh Chandra Agarwal, 52, resident of Bhayander, was arrested on Monday and we recovered a cutter from him,” said senior police inspector Dhananjay Bagayatkar of Nehru Nagar police station.

Narrating the incident, the victim Sanjay Yadav, who lost use of his left arm after an accident, said, “I boarded the MSRTC bus at Swarget bus stand at around 9.30pm on Sunday to return to Mumbai. I took a window seat. An unidentified person wearing posh clothes sat next to me and bought a ticket for Nehru Nagar.”

During the journey, the two men got talking. Agarwal first tried to offer gutka to Yadav, who refused because he doesn’t chew gutka. At around 10.45pm, the bus reached Lonavala where the bus stopped for 15 minutes. Thereafter, the lights of the bus were switched off and the passengers went to sleep.

Agarwal, took out a packet of cream biscuits and started eating from it. “He offered them to me but I refused. He asked me several times and that made me suspicious. I took a biscuit and ate a small part of it while he looked at me curiously. When he wasn’t looking, I kept the rest of the biscuit in my shirt pocket. I then pretended to fall asleep,” said Yadav.

Thinking Yadav to be asleep, Agarwal frisked him and stole his mobile phone. He then reached for the gold chain that Yadav was wearing  and began cutting it with a cutter. It was then that Yadav caught hold of the culprit’s hand and began shouting to wake up his fellow passengers. In a fit of anger, the passengers began thrashing Agarwal who begged to be released. Instead, he was handed over to the police. 

Agarwal will be produced before the local court on Tuesday.