Mumbai: 60-year-old man among 4 arrested for Rs 2 lakh robbery at Malad flat

MUMBAI: The city crime branch has arrested four robbers, one of them 60 years old, for allegedly entering a 78-year-old woman's

Malad

flat on the pretext of delivering a courier, tying up her hands and legs and gagging her before fleeing with jewellery worth Rs 1.9 lakh.

The robbery took place on May 7. The arrested accused- Afzal Hussain (28), Barkat Ali (18), Abdul Munaf alias Chacha (60) and Sachin Mishra (27)-have been remanded in police custody. "It was Chacha who had given a tip-off to the other accused about the flat," a police officer said. While Mishra is a Bhandup resident, the other three are from UP. The accused were planning to escape to Nepal via UP. Police have recovered jewellery worth Rs 55,000 which the men had sold.

On the day of the crime, three men came to the woman's first floor

flat

when she was alone. "One of them rang the doorbell, while two others hid behind him," said Vinayak Chavan, senior inspector. The moment she opened the door to collect what the man claimed was a courier, the accused pushed their way into the flat.

A case of robbery and criminal conspiracy was filed with Malad police station and the crime branch, too, began its probe. Investigators scanned

CCTV

footage and found the accused in clips at

Santacruz

, Dadar and Bhandup stations. Besides, a scan of phone dump data at several locations led to some suspicious numbers matching. Using technical and human intelligence, police zeroed in on a person. His call data records led cops to UP, where three of the accused were held.

The accused reportedly conducted a recce two days before the robbery.