Mumbai: Cops hoodwink and trap man absconding for 16 years

City cops turned to subterfuge to nab an accused Pravin Jadeja who had been absconding for 16 years The police got in touch with a former colleague of their target and told him that Jadejarsquos insurance policy had matured and he needed to come to Mumbai to claim itJadeja who was arrested in 2007 for attempting to siphon off Rs 40000 from his employer believed his friend returned to the city and was promptly arrestedThe accusedrsquos employer A H Gangar a Hindmatabased cloth merchant had entrusted Jadeja then a 24yearold salesman to collect outstanding amounts from certain shopkeepers in Dadar Jadeja collected Rs 40000 but after returning he told his boss that when he had gone to take a leak somebody stole the bag containing the cashThe accused at RAK Marg police stationThe Rafi Ahmed Kidwai RAK Marg cops who took up the investigation found that Jadeja was lying and arrested him after booking him under Section 408 criminal breach of trust by servant of the Indian Penal Code However after securing bail Jadeja stopped attending court hearings and vanished from MumbaiAlso Read Mumbai Crime Man thought he was rating travel sites was being conned insteadWhen the cops tried to look up his address they learnt that nothing had been taken on record The Dadar court then pronounced him an absconder and issued a nonbailable warrant against him Recently Dr Pravin Mundhe DCP Zone 4 directed all police stations to nab such absconders Senior Inspector Kumud Kadam of the RAK Marg police station instructed Assistant Inspector Mahesh Lamkhade to track Jadeja Constables Narayan Kadam Suresh Kadlag Ravindra Sable Vidya Yadav and Sushant Bankar were part of his team The cops began inquiring around Hindmata where Jadeja used to workldquoWhile questioning salesmen at Hindmata we obtained vital information Jadeja hailed from Kutch district in Gujarat and has a pair of gold teethrdquo said API LamkhadeldquoBut tracking down one person in a district is like searching for a needle in a haystack So we thought about devising a different strategyrdquo he addedCops kept talking to Jadejarsquos former colleagues at the shop and got a phone number that Jadeja was apparently using An officer dialled the number but the person who picked up claimed he was not Pravin Jadeja but Pradipsingh and hung upldquoHe was clever and didnrsquot talk to strangers over the phone So we decided to lure him with a policy maturity amount and asked him to come to Mumbai to sign documents and collect the same On February 1 a message was sent to one of his friends mentioning his name and a vague address It stated that he had to claim R25000 We included the number of a cop who posed as an insurance agent We also changed his profile picture to that of the company and kept on uploading various policy plans as his status imagesrdquo said LamkhadeJadeja who was forwarded the message checked the status of the coprsquos profile for a couple of days Convinced that he was a genuine agent he finally called him and asked who had insured him ldquoThe constable replied that his former employer had done so Jadeja then came to Mumbai and we nabbed him on Thursdayrdquo said API LamkhadeDuring his interrogation Jadeja initially insisted that he was a person named Pradeep Singh But when he was shown court records which mentioned his gold teeth he gave up the ruseJadeja had been working as a vegetable vendor in the village of Shabhrai in Kutch district