Woman, aide arrested over theft for ‘London friend’
A woman and her acquaintance have been arrested and the police have recovered a diamond bracelet and other jewellery from their possession.
IANS
Aug 31, 2023 09:14
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Lucknow, Aug 31 (IANS) A woman and her acquaintance have been arrested and the police have recovered a diamond bracelet and other jewellery from their possession.
Additional DCP, East Zone, Syed Qasim Abdi said that the police got on the case after a widow major in NCC lodged an FIR of missing jewellery from her residence in the Nehru enclave area of Cantonment.
The arrested woman has been identified as Shamim Bano, 32, and her aide is Mohammed Rafiq, 50.
“A police team got on the case and with the help of surveillance and CCTV, we got a video in which the accused was seen taking away some articles in the night,” said the officer.
The officer said that the police rounded up Shamim from her residence and during interrogation, she disclosed that six months ago, she got in touch with a virtual profile whose owner posed as a businessman from the UK on Facebook.
“Jacob from London sent a friend request to the accused woman impersonating himself as a businessman and later lured her of free trips to London and expensive gifts,” said the officer.
In the due course, he won the trust of the accused woman and told her that he would be sending ornaments as gifts in the time to come.
“One day he sent me a video of his bungalow and several ornaments as gifts which he told me that he would be bringing with him soon. A couple of days after this, I got a call from a man who introduced himself as a customs officer and asked me to deposit Rs 10 lakh as Jacob from London has been held for customs clearance,” the accused told the police in her interrogation.
Minutes later he sent me the idea of decamping with the jewellery where I was employed as a domestic aide, she said.
She added that Jacob told her that once free, he would get back all her jewellery. In the greed and lucre, she decamped with the ornaments and sought help from her aide Mohammed Rafique.
“I gave the jewellery to a jeweller who gave me cash and then he transferred money into the account number given by Jacob,” the accused said.
