Precious stones dealer conned by fake officials at Mumbai airport

MUMBAI: A dealer in precious stones who had gone to the Mumbai international airport on Tuesday to meet his friends was conned of foreign currency worth Rs 26 lakh by three persons posing as customs officials. The trio, including a woman, accused him of smuggling foreign currency and took away his bag with the money on the pretext of an X-ray scan. Sahar police have arrested the woman and are looking for her aides, reports Nitasha Natu.
The 33-year-old complainant, who is from Tamil Nadu, supplies natural precious stones to astrologers, pandits, maulavis and jewellers. A week before the incident, he had made $25,000 in a deal with a Rajasthan client and carried the money with him to Mumbai. He was staying at a hotel in Dongri.
The complainant went to the airport carrying 25,000 UAE dirhams. Since he was not comfortable leaving the remaining dollars behind at the hotel, he carried them with him too. He was waiting outside T2’s departure gate when two men and a woman approached him around 10.15pm. They introduced themselves as customs officials and said they had received a tip-off that he was smuggling foreign currency. “On frisking him, the trio found the dirhams and demanded a bill for it. The complainant replied he did not have any. One of the accused took the complainant’s bag that had the dollars and said he would get it X-ray scanned,” said a police officer.
As time elapsed, neither was his bag returned nor did any senior officers arrive. The complainant got suspicious and started questioning the two accused. They started moving away and the man melted away into the crowd. But the woman couldn’t get away as the complainant raised an alarm. She was identified as Salma Banu, who is from Karnataka. The police booked her on charges of cheating and produced her before a magistrate court.