Man steals Rs 1.5 lakh left at railway station, footprints he left at shop nail him

MUMBAI: An electronics professional has been arrested for allegedly stealing cash lying in a bag that a businessman had forgotten at Grant Road railway station recently. The accused, Sharad Rupnar, was nabbed after the railway police tracked him down by following a backward trail and nabbed him in 12 hours.
On February 13, businessman Shankar Patel was carrying Rs 1.5 lakh.Around 7pm, Patel sat on a bench at the station with the bag beside him. In his hurry to board a train, he left the bag. It was only beyond Dadar that he realised it. He got off at Bandra and returned, but by then the bag had disappeared. He then lodged a complaint.
After checking CCTV footage, the police found that the bag had been on the bench for some time. “A woman sat there and checked the bag but did not take it. Later a man in his thirties sat on the bench,” said senior inspector Pradeep Salunke of Government Railway Police at Churchgate. “As he got up, the bag vanished.”
The railway police followed the trail of surveillance footage backwards and found that the man had reached the platform from a foot over-bridge that leads to Lamington Road. After visiting about two dozen shops in the area and checking CCTV footage of the shops, they found out that he had visited an electronics shop.
Rupnar had picked up part of the supplies required for a work project. “We posted our men at the shop. When his work partner arrived to pick up the remaining supplies, we enquired with ed him. He led us to the suspect at Bandra,” said Salunke. “The cash was recovered from him.”