On Friday, Manish Vidyadhar Tripathi, 35, was arrested by the sleuths of the Cyber Crime Cell of Mumbai crime branch on Friday for allegedly making websites providing complete details and information regarding the operations and business handling of Mumbai’s dabbawalas.
Tripathi raised funds for the dabbawala community from foreign countries, and cheated the dabbawalas by pocketing the money generated.
According to the police, the complaint was registered by one of the dabbawalas, Vijay Patil (name changed on request). Patil is member of Mumbai Food Tiffin Transport Organisation and Nutan Tiffin Boxes Suppliers Charity Trust.
“Five years ago, Tripathi had come to the office of Patil’s organisation. Tripathi claimed to be a management student and said he wanted to study functioning of Mumbai-based dabbawalas. For this purpose, he sought Patil’s help to gather information about operations of dabbawalas,” said a crime branch official.
Patil explained how, since then, Tripathi stayed with him for a few months to learn the dabbawalas’ business operations. The crime branch official said, “In March 2006, Tripathi again met Patil and said he wanted to develop websites for dabbawalas and this website would spread information about the dabbawala operations across the world. He also claimed that through the website, they would ask for funds for the dabbawala community which would be then used for the poor and needy dabbawalas, thereby resulting in their growth.”
Since the scheme was to financially aid dabbawalas, Patil did not object to this proposal. Following this, over a few months, Tripathi prepared websites like mydabbawala.com, mydabbawala.org and mumbaidabbawala.com. Through these websites, he intended to raise funds for dabbawalas and had also prepared an email ID for this purpose, police claimed.
“On the homepage of the website, he had posted photograph of Prince Charles with dabbawalas and various programmes related to dabbawalas and their photographs. He did not take any permission for uploading these photographs on the websites. Since Patil and his associates were not well-versed with computers, Tripathi was taking care of the websites,” said the officer.
The police alleged that, since past four years, Tripathi has been pocketing the money which was generated through the website from foreign countries. “When Patil learnt about the misappropriation, he lodged a police complaint. Tripathi claimed to be a member of dabbawala organisation and is believed to have cheated the dabbawalas to the tune of lakhs of rupees. We are investigating where he has invested the fund money,” said the officer.
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