Duo rob elderly couple on Pune-Mumbai Expressway after offering lift

PUNE: Two persons on Monday morning offered lift to an elderly couple at Chandni Chowk in their car and robbed their gold ornaments worth Rs1.5 lakh before abandoning them near Kivale, along the Pune-Mumbai Expressway.
The 60-year-old resident of Kasba Peth and his wife walked some distance on the service road of the expressway to reach the Dehu Road police station and file an FIR. Sub-inspector Yogesh Ramekar of the Dehu Road police said, “The elderly man runs a jewellery business from his house in Kasba Peth. On Monday afternoon, he and his wife had gone to a banquet hall in Bavdhan to attend a marriage,” Ramekar said.
They had hired an autorickshaw from Kasba Peth, but its driver had dropped them at Chandni Chowk. “They were waiting for public transport to reach the hall, about 2km from Chandni Chowk,” Ramekar said.
He said a white car stopped near the couple around 11am. The person sitting next to the driver asked the elderly man where they wanted to go. When he told them that they would go to Bavdhan, the suspect told him that he would drop them to the hall because he and the man in the driver’s seat were going in that direction. “The duo drove the car towards the expressway instead of going to Bavdhan after the couple sat in the car,” Ramekar said.
The elderly jewellery businessman, out of fear, did not ask the duo where they were going. The suspects stopped the car along the expressway at Kivale after driving about 20km from Chandni Chowk. “The duo threatened to thrash the couple and removed two gold chains and ring collectively worth Rs1.5 lakh from the elderly man’s wife and drove away,” Ramekar said.
He said the complainant could not note down the registration number of the car. “He told us that the duo were about 35 years old and speaking in Marathi,” Ramekar said, adding that the Dehu Road police had decided to put up boards along the Pune-Mumbai Expressway and the highway to alert people that they should not take or offer lift to/from unknown people.