Three arrested in Mumbai for abducting, robbing TN teacher

Befriending a stranger who gave her a missed call cost a 27-year-old teacher from Tamil Nadu dearly. The accused allegedly abducted the teacher with the help of two accomplices and robbed her of valuables at knife-point inside a moving car. The trio also threw the woman out of the moving car on Eastern Freeway after robbing her, police said.

Police said that the accused robbed the woman of 40 grams gold and cash that was in her purse.

The arrested trio has been identified as Prabhaharan Nadar alias Kumar, 28, Esikiappan Nadar, 33 and Krishnan Murliyar, 23, all residents of Kandivli.

The complainant in her statement to the police said she got a missed call from Kumar a year ago. The duo soon got talking and became friends.

“Last week, the woman came to Mumbai to attend a wedding and also met Kumar, who allegedly hatched a plan to rob her of the jewellery that she was wearing,” said an official attached to RAK Marg police station. “On May 28, Kumar hired a rental car and under the guise of dropping her at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj station, took her for a ride. While the two were sitting in the rear seat, Esikiappan was drivingthe vehicle and Murliyar was seated at the front. As they were travelling towards CSMT, they stopped the car near Wadi Bunder, where Kumar got down under the pretext of withdrawing cash from an ATM kisk,” the official said.

Murliyar then switched to the back seat and the vehicle was driven to Eastern Freeway. “Murliyar then threatened the woman with a knife and asked her to remove the gold chain she was wearing. They then threw her out of the running car on the Eastern Freeway and fled the spot,” the official said.

RAK Marg police registered a case in this regard and unit 4 of crime branch had undertaken a parallel investigation into the case.

Crime branch officials later arrested one of the accused from Dharavi after going through CCTV footage from Sewri. The footage showed the rental car being driven towards CSMT on the day of the incident. A team headed by Sandesh Revale, senior police inspector attached to Unit 4, identified one of the accused and apprehended him.

A police official said the other two accused had shifted to Ganesh Nagar in Kandivli. All the three were produced before a magistrate and were in police custody. The trio had sold the teacher’s gold chain to a jeweller in Kandivli for Rs1.08 lakh and were about to distribute the cash among them, added an official.