Gurugram The Gurugram police have come across at least 24 cases in the past year in which people concocted stories of being robbed in order to avoid paying debts and mislead family members or employers, as well as police officers.
Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime), said they have booked 24 people for wasting the time of police officers under Section 182 (false information with intent to cause public servant to use his lawful power to the injury of another person) of the Indian Penal Code. Police officers said they receive at least three fake complaints every day, which they close after preliminary investigation.
In one case, a 29-year-old executive of a private pharmaceutical company was booked on October 21 for stabbing himself at his residence and concocting a story about a robbery to siphon off his family’s money, said police officers.
According to police, they received a call at 8pm on July 21 from a certain Kushagra Ahuja, a resident of Sector 10A, who said he was stabbed and robbed by four unidentified men posing as Wi-Fi technicians.
According to Sangwan, the complainant said he was alone at home at 7.30 pm when a Wi-Fi technician entered his house and asked to see his router. Two other men followed him, held Ahuja hostage at knifepoint and took the cash and valuables kept in the house, Ahuja told police, said Sangwan.
Police scanned footage from CCTV cameras installed on the route leading to the house and found that no one entered the lane or the building, as the complainant was claiming. Sangwan said the CCTV footage showed Ahuja leaving and returning after a few minutes with a packet in his hand. The sequence of events as narrated by Ahuja were not corroborated by the police findings, said Sangwan.
During questioning, Ahuja broke down and said he committed the theft and concocted the story because he incurred losses during the Covid-19 pandemic and was in debt, said Sangwan.
In another case, 32-year-old labour contractor, Kamal Singh, was booked on May 12 for falsely claiming that he was robbed by three people at gunpoint on national highway-8, said police.
According to police officers, Singh said he was driving to Noida after withdrawing money from a bank in Sector 5, Gurugram at 11.50 am on May 12. He said three assailants intercepted his car, held him at gunpoint and snatched his bag that contained ₹4.4 lakh, police said. Singh called the police control room and said the suspects fled from the spot after he raised an alarm, according to police officers.
Sangwan said that within a few minutes, three teams were formed to probe the case. “The teams scanned more than 100 CCTVs in the area, outside the bank and at the exit of Jharsa crossing near Sector 31, but could not find anything. We found discrepancies in the sequence of events as narrated by Singh. After checking the CCTVs, the complainant was taken to the police station and confronted. He broke down and revealed that he had concocted the story,” said Sangwan.
On May 7, a grocery store employee and another man were arrested for making up a false story that his scooter was intercepted by assailants, who robbed him of ₹1.90 lakh, said police officers. The suspects were identified as Mohammad Gulab and Balbadar Sharan, said police.
Sangwan said that Nitin Agrawal, a resident of Najafgarh who runs a grocery shop in Kapashera in Delhi, told police that his employee, Gulab, who he had sent on a scooter to Sirhaul to bring ₹1.90 lakh from another shopkeeper, was robbed.
“Gulab was working at the grocery store for the past two years and had gained Agrawal’s trust. After collecting the cash in Sirhaul, he called him employer and said someone was following him and then switched off his mobile phone. After some time, he called his employer from another number and said some unidentified people intercepted his scooter, snatched his scooter key, took the cash and his mobile phone and fled from the spot,” said Sangwan.
Police officers said they confirmed that the cash was collected from a shopkeeper in Sirhaul and checked CCTV footage from several locations, but could not find verify Gulab’s story.
In another case, on December 20, police received a call from a certain Rajkumar Yadav, who said he was robbed of cash, his phone, laptop and other items. When police investigated, they realised that the incident was the fallout of a financial dispute between Yadav and an autorickshaw driver, and that Yadav had planted his “stolen” items in an attempt to frame the driver, said police officers. Yadav was booked under Section 182 of the Indian Penal Code.
