 "Since he used fake credentials at the time of booking, police were able to track him down through technical surveillance. Image used for representational purpose/Pixabay")
A man took over 200 flights spanning over 110 days last year.
The reason was to steal jewellery and other valuables from passengers. And he was doing very well to earn the large sum of money, so much so that he purchased a hotel in central Delhi, only to be arrested on Monday.
Here’s how he stole lakhs of rupees worth of jewellery from cabin baggage and how the police apprehended him.
200 flights, lakhs of jewellery, and more
Last month, a woman travelling from Hyderabad to Delhi reported that jewellery worth Rs 7 lakh had been stolen from her bag. A man from the United States filed another complaint with the Delhi police, reporting that valuables worth Rs 20 lakh had been stolen from his cabin bag. After scanning several hours of airport footage, police arrested Rajesh Kapoor, the man who carefully carried out these thefts.
Rajesh used forged documents and an incorrect mobile number to book these flights. Deputy Commissioner of Delhi Police, Usha Rangrani, stated that he meticulously planned his every move. “He would use his deceased brother’s identity documents to book tickets. He would mostly stalk passengers on connecting flights and target elderly women carrying handbags, assuming they would not notice the theft right away,” she explained as reported by Times of India (TOI).
The senior cop stated that he chose elderly and female passengers as targets and observed their behaviour at the airport. He would follow them or subtly read the information on the baggage declaration slip to learn more about the valuables in the bag. According to the police, the man mostly interacted at the boarding gate, but he would also observe the behaviour of his targets beforehand.
Impact Shorts
View All“Exploiting the chaos of boarding, Kapoor would secretly rifle through overhead cabins, carefully assessing and stealing valuables from handbags of unsuspecting passengers who would be settling into their seats. His method, carefully timed to coincide with the distractions inherent in the boarding process, allowed him to operate undetected,” said the DCP, reports TOI.
If the target sat at a distance, Kapoor would even ask the crew members to change his seat so that he could sit near the person. The police also stated that he would frequently pretend to adjust the bags in the overhead section while other passengers boarded the plane in order to steal it.
Since he used fake credentials at the time of booking, police were able to track him down through technical surveillance.
The chase and arrest
Kapoor has been arrested from Paharganj, where he allegedly kept the stolen jewellery, said DCP Usha Rangnani, at a press conference, following police complaint by two passengers against him over a two-month period. He was planning to sell the jewellery to Sharad Jain, 46, who has also been arrested from Karol Bagh, she said.
On 11 April, a passenger lost her jewellery worth Rs 7 lakh while travelling from Hyderabad to Delhi. Another theft was reported on 2 February, where a passenger had lost jewellery items worth Rs 20 lakh while he was travelling from Amritsar to Delhi.
The police analysed the passenger manifests for these flights and scanned footage from over 100 CCTV cameras before identifying the suspect. His phone number was obtained from the airlines but turned out to be fraudulent. Technical surveillance revealed his original phone number, and his location was traced to Paharganj.
On sustained interrogation, he confessed to being involved in five such cases, including one in Hyderabad, the police said. He disclosed that he spent most of the cash on online and offline gambling. Kapoor was found involved in 11 cases of theft, gambling and criminal breach of trust, out of which five cases were of airport.
Kapoor’s ‘Ricky Deluxe’
Kapoor owns ‘Ricky Deluxe’, a guest house in Delhi Paharganj, near the New Delhi Railway Station. The man lived on the third floor of the guest house, while the other floors accommodated the customers. According to the police, he operated a mobile repair shop in Delhi in addition to his money exchange business, reports NDTV.
He stole valuables in several airports, including Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Bangalore, Mumbai, and Amritsar. A large amount of gold and silver jewellery was recovered from his Paharganj home; however, he also admitted that on several occasions, he sold the stolen jewellery to a jeweller named Sharad Jain in neighbouring Karol Bagh.
The thief who boarded flights previously stole from trains and “gained success,” according to police. After being caught, the man “went silent” and later decided to plan airport thefts.
With inputs from PTI