Mumbai: The Bhandup Police have arrested four men for allegedly robbing a 23year-old Jalgaon resident who had come to Mumbai seeking job opportunities.
The accused forced the victim to reveal his unified payments interface (UPI) number and mobile banking personal identification number (mPIN) as he didn’t have cash in his possession.
The matter surfaced when the victim, Asif Ayub Khatik, approached registered a police complaint. The incident happened on September 8 at a sports ground near Runwal Greens in Bhandup west.
As per his statement to the police, he was waiting for someone near the ground when four people approached him. “Then they frisked his belongings and pockets but they didn’t find anything but a mobile phone. Then they forced him to provide his UPI password,” said sub-inspector Abhijit Tekawade, Bhandup police.
Tekawade added, “They used the passwords and transferred whatever was in the victim’s bank account (Rs 4,400) to a wine shop account then ran away.”
According to the police, before the crime, the four had initially approached the wine shop owner saying they would need cash and threatened him to not tell about it to anyone. “After the crime, they went back to the Wine Shop and asked them to give the money in the cash form,” the officer explained.
Using the closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage from the nearby spots, the police later identified the accused and managed to arrest three of them –Irfan Mohammad Ali, 26, Saddam Hussain Shaikh, 30, and Swapnil Tiwari, 22 – on Friday.
