A social media ‘influencer’ was arrested by the Bandra police on Monday night for allegedly stealing valuables worth Rs 24 lakh from a BMW car parked outside Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai. The valuables included gold jewellery as well as diamonds priced around Rs 23 lakh.
The accused identified as 31-year old Abhimanyu Gupta made reels on Instagram where he had four lakh followers and would show his flashy lifestyle. He was formerly a TikTok star where he had around nine million followers, before the platform got banned by the Indian government.
As per a Hindustan Times report, Pratik Maheshwari, an import-export businessman from Seven Bungalows Andheri had come to the Bandra hospital on Saturday evening to check his father who was admitted there. When he parked the car outside the hospital, he had left a bag containing diamonds and other jewellery, ₹1 lakh in cash, documents and digital keys of the car on the rear seat, which was missing when he came back. The rear window of the car was also found broken.
An official from the Bandra police said on finding the bag missing and the window of his car broken, Maheshwari came to the police station to report the theft. The police booked the then unknown accused under sections 379 (theft) and 427 (mischief causing damage of property) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The CCTV footage outside the hospital was scanned by the police to look for the accused. Following this, a red and white Yamaha superbike used by the accused was spotted and the police started tracking its location. The bike was eventually found parked in Kurla.
Hindustan Times quoted the investigating officer as saying, “We waited for someone to take the vehicle and caught Gupta when he arrived. He later told us that he had stolen the bike from Panvel and affixed a fake number plate to it.” The officer further said that apart from the bike, the goods that were stolen from Maheshwari’s car on Saturday was also recovered by the police.
Gupta was produced in court on Tuesday morning and is currently under police custody.
The social media star, Gupta who had allegedly committed thefts and house break-ins to fund his lavish lifestyle was also arrested earlier in 2022 for stealing 14 mobile phones, sharp weapons, fake jewellery as well as foreign currency. As per police officials, he had also broke into a locked house in suburban Kurla last year and had fled with gold and silver ornaments. The theft came to light when the family residing in the house returned and found that their ornaments were missing and lodged a police complaint.
The investigating officer of the latest robbery committed by Gupta said, “He is a habitual thief who routinely steals to maintain a lifestyle which he can flash on social media.” He added that Gupta has an eye for expensive things.
(with PTI inputs)
Comments
0 comment