Four held for kidnapping, robbing taxi driver

Mumbai: When four men hailed his cab at Clare Road in Byculla at 2 am last Monday and asked to be taken to an industrial estate, driver Mohammad Akbar Rauf Khan (30) had found nothing suspicious in their behaviour. The trip, and the night itself, however turned out to be nothing what Khan could have imagined. The four passengers, two of them were arrested by Nagpada police and other two by crime branch last week, had proceeded to abduct Khan, injured him with a knife, robbed him and forcibly sought his help in escaping with their booty, a stolen air-conditioner compressor.

The four got had down at the industrial estate address, returning 15 minutes later with an AC compressor, which made Khan suspicious and he refused to resume the journey. Following this one of the passengers, Siraj Pathan, threatened Khan with a knife and asked to be taken to the next destination, said senior police inspector Sunil Mane, in charge of Crime Branch Unit 3.

Pathan asked Khan to sit in the backseat and began driving on his own. Pathan drove for around two kilometres but rammed into a traffic signal at Carnac Bunder, damaging the four-wheeler severely. Shaken by the mishap, the four decided to flee, leaving Khan and the AC compressor, which it later transpired they had stolen from a repair shop, behind in the car. Before fleeing, Pathan slashed Khan a few times with his knife and robbed him of his cash worth '1, 000 and a mobile phone.

Khan went to the Nagpada police station to lodge a case against the unidentified men who had kidnapped and robbed him. The police arrested two of the four passengers, Firoze and Usman, within days of the case getting registered. The duo was arrested on the basis of footage from CCTV cameras that were installed along the stretch where the car had travelled, from Clare Road to Carnac Bunder.   

When The Asian Age spoke to Mr Mane, he said, “We got the CCTV footage from the route they took and analysed it, which led us to nab the four.