Mumbai crime: Wanted to teach him a lesson, says man who stole mobile phones from employer

The Dongri police have arrested a former employee of an electronic store for decamping with six expensive cell phones and a laptop from the shop after his employer failed to pay him his salary for two months. According to the police, 24-year-old Praful Prabhakar Thakur had been working at the Unity Enterprises store for two months, when he fled with the loot on October 9. He was finally arrested earlier this week, almost two months after the crime.

u00a0The stolen goods

Assistant Police Inspector Vilas Rathod from Dongri Police station, told SUNDAY MiD DAY, "Thakur had worked in the mobile shop for two months but hadn't been paid his dues amounting to R6,000. He said that he was a poor man and was finding it tough to make ends meet without a salary, so he was forced to steal the goods."

Praful Prabhakar Thakur, who stole mobile phones from Unity Enterprises where he was an employee.

In his statement to the cops, Thakur alleged he didn't even have money to travel from his home to the workplace. On the day of the incident, he apparently confronted the shop owner and demanded that he be paid. "Instead of paying him, the shop owner allegedly sacked him. The owner now is arguing he is a former employee," the investigating officer told SMD.

Thakur then left the shop at 6 pm and apparently sat at Sandhurst Road railway station for two hours. It was here that he hatched a plan to teach his former boss a lesson. He returned to the shop with a pair of duplicate keys, which he had not handed over, sneaked in, and fled with the six mobile phones and a laptop.

Interestingly, Thakur did not sell any of the phones. In his confession to the cops, he said he had not stolen the goods to make money but to make his employer suffer and learn a lesson. All the phones have been recovered from Thakur's house inside a chawl in Worli.

Thakur has now been booked under Section 380 (theft) of the Indian Penal Code and as the goods were recovered he has been remanded to jail custody. "The accused has no money at all and could not bail himself out," said the officer.u00a0