PANJIM: In a major breakthrough, the Goa Police arrested the three persons accused of confining, assaulting and robbing a Japanese tourist.
The three persons, who were traced in three different cities, were later arrested in Jaipur and Kochi respectively.
The gang executed the crime by scripting a false drama of a fake police raid to rob the tourist.
It may be recalled that the Japanese tourist Tatsuki Teramoto was allegedly assaulted and robbed on December 28, 2022 of credit card and cash totalling to Rs 9 lakh. The tourist recently took to twitter to complain with regards to the crime following which he was asked by the North Goa Superintendent of Police Nidhin Valsan to file a complaint via mail.
After investigating into this complaint, the police found that a gang of five to six persons enacted a false drama of police personnel coming to arrest them and threatened the complainant of dire consequences if he did not concede to their demands. These were persons posing as police in civil clothes.
Four teams of police were created under the supervision of Deputy Superintendent of Police Suraj Halarnkar and Jivba Dalvi. However, because the complainant shared the images of the accused persons on Twitter they were alerted and went underground. Three teams were sent to Kochi, Chennai and Jaipur. The team of PI Dinesh Gadekar traced two of the accused in Jaipur. They arrested accused Wasim Khan alias Raju, 25 and Chand Babu alias Romy, 33 from Hasanpur, Jaipur and further nabbed Tahir Younus, a native of Rajasthan, in Kochi. The investigation also revealed that Raju and Romy were given Rs 2 lakh each to flee the State after their cover was blown.
The police are in a pursuit to trace and arrest the mastermind. According to the police, the modus operandi of the gang was to hire apartments, call tourists to their apartment and try to sell them Jaipur jewellery from a shop in Pernem to further sell it in their States. “We have received one complaint as of now. We have arrested the main accused,” SP Valsan said.
“The gang came to Goa during the tourist season during December and targeted gullible persons. We are going to investigate the case by further interrogating the arrested persons,” he said.
“Police officers should show their identity card. If they do not reveal their identity as police, the concerned persons need not respond to the person the way they are expected to respond to police,” SP Valsan advised.
