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Dr B C Bommaiah, a heart specialist had gone to the Vijaya Bank in Gandhi Bazar at around 5.10 pm on Thursday. He left a suitcase containing a portable heart scanner worth Rs eight lakh in the back seat. His driver was in the car.
“A man approached my driver and pointed to some currency notes lying close to the front wheel of the car wheel. The moment, the driver got down, the other person opened the back door and fled with the suitcase,” Dr Bommaiah told Deccan Herald.
Interestingly, a similar trick had been tried on him in April this year, but it was averted due to the presence of mind of the driver. “It happened near Sagar Hospital on Bannerghatta Road. But, the driver first locked all the doors before getting down,” Bommaiah said.
In another incident on Friday morning, Ramaswamy from Tamil Nadu had parked his car near a petrol bunk on B T Road as he had to receive a call.
While he was busy on the phone, a man approached him and pointed to the front wheel. Ramaswamy got down, thinking something was wrong with his tyres and found a few currency notes of Rs 10 denomination strewn on the ground. He collected them and got back into the car, only to find his bag containing a laptop and other gadgets missing.
Praveen Ranka, an industrialist, who had lost his 30-year old US made revolver along with Rs 50,000 and some important documents two months ago, was lucky to get back the gun along with five bullets within three days, but not the other items.
According to him, his driver got out of the car when a stranger told him that the car had a flat tyre. As he got down, the man grabbed the bag kept on the back seat and fled.
“A police officer attached to the Kamakshipalya police station noticed a person stopped a man carrying bag, near JP Nagar. The man escaped, abandoning the bag which contained my revolver,” Ranka said.
‘Major challenge’
The rising number of such cases are posing a major challenge for the police which only claims to have identified certain gangs involved in the crime since last couple of months. Every week, eight to 10 such cases are registered in different police stations in the City.
“Such cases are booked as thefts. We really don’t get to recover the entire amount lost as the gang members who are mostly from outside, strike and go back to other places. And in most of the cases, the victims lose huge amount of money which is again very difficult to recover. We have recently arrested some of them involved in vehicle theft. We are analysing their pattern and we will nab some of them very soon,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Alok Kumar said.