Mumbai: Police find Dubai man’s 1 lakh phone with thief’s mom

MUMBAI: An iPhone XS, worth Rs 1.10 lakh, was stolen from the pocket of a 50-year-old Dubai resident, who was here for a relative’s funeral recently, at a railway station. He caught the thief but the phone could not be found. He flew back to Dubai dejected, only to get a call from his brother two days later, that his phone had been retrieved from the thief’s mother. Police are now looking for his accomplice, Faiz.

Ilyas Kazi, a sales manager, lives in Dubai with his wife. Last week, his father-in-law passed away and he rushed here to be with his wife’s family. He was returning from a visit to his in-laws’ home in Kharghar and got off a Harbour local at Kurla at 5.45pm on Tuesday. The platform was crowded and Kazi could feel someone pick his pocket.

“He immediately grabbed the thief’s arm,” Kazi’s brother, Siraj, told TOI, “but the man claimed he had not stolen anything.” The thief, a Govandi resident, had passed on the phone to his accomplice, Siraj added. The thief wriggled out of Kazi’s grip and started to run but he raised an alarm, which alerted policemen patrolling the platform in mufti. Constable Ganesh Jagdale and his colleagues caught hold of the thief but he lied to them about his identity, and said his name was Gulsher. Later, when police got his mother to fetch his ID card from home, they learnt it was Gulzar Shaikh. He had previously been arrested in four cases of theft at CSMT, Bandra and Kurla stations.

“We learnt during investigation that Faiz kept the phone with him for sometime before turning it over to Shaikh’s mother. We recovered the phone from her house within 48 hours of the theft,” said senior inspector Rajendra Pal.

Kazi, whose flight was scheduled on the evening of the theft, was concerned as his phone contained vital data. “He was relieved after learning that the phone has been retrieved. He will now send an NOC so I can apply to the railway court to get back the phone,” Siraj said.