Masked bike-borne trio steal techie’s smartphone in Wakad

PUNE: Three masked men on a motorcycle stole a software engineer’s smartphone while he was walking along the service road of Katraj-Dehu Road bypass in Wakad around 8.30pm on Sunday.
The techie lodged an FIR with the Hinjewadi police on Monday. The men stopped the complainant (34) near the showroom of an automobile company, engaged him in a conversation and stole the phone from his shirt’s pocket by diverting his attention.
The techie told TOI, “The spot where the trio stopped me was completely dark. There are no street lights on the stretch.”
The techie, a resident of Wakad, told the police that he went for a walk along the service road every night. “I thought the trio must be looking for some address, and so I stopped when they approached me. All of a sudden, one of them asked me why I had called them,” he said.
He clarified to them that he had not called them. “However, they kept the conversation going and left after a while. I had just started walking again when I realized that my smartphone and earphones were missing. It happened so quickly that I could not note the registration number of their motorcycle,” he said.
An officer from the Hinjewadi police said, “We have launched a search for the trio.”