Hired to lug baggage, porter vanishes with Rs 15 lakh valuables at Mumbai’s Dadar station | Mumbai News – Times of India

MUMBAI: An unregistered railway porter has been arrested allegedly for stealing valuables worth Rs 15 lakh from a senior citizen’s luggage at Dadar station. The accused porter, Deepak Das (50), was nabbed from CSMT.
The complainant, an elderly woman who lives in Dahanu, had recently arrived by an outstation train at CSMT after having attended a wedding. The woman had two large bags with her. Besides personal belongings, the bags contained gold and diamond ornaments, sarees, dry fruits and cash – all these vauables of a collective worth of Rs 15 lakh.
To travel to Dahanu, the woman had planned to board a connecting outstation train from Dadar station a few hours later. For this, she would have to board a local train from CSMT to reach Dadar with her luggage. She spotted the unlicensed porter at CSMT and offered him Rs 150 to carry her luggage on a handcart up to the local train platform at CSMT and then accompany her on the local train up to Dadar. Das agreed to accompany her with the luggage and the two of them then boarded a local train from CSMT and alighted at Dadar on platform 4.
To board her connecting train to go home from Dadar, the elderly woman needed to take the foot over-bridge. She gave the luggage to the porter who was to follow her. While the woman reached platform 6, she couldn’t spot the porter. She got back onto the foot over-bridge to look for him, but in vain.
The woman then approached the Government Railway Police and a criminal offence was registered. The railway police approached the Railway Protection Force, who handle CCTV footage at the station. Investigators went through footage from many closed-circuit television cameras to nab the porter, a Dombivli resident, who went missing with the woman’s luggage.
The cameras captured the porter and the woman climbing the foot over-bridge at platform 5 at Dadar, but later, he went to another platform and boarded a train for CSMT. The police checked footage from cameras at CSMT and spotted him on platform 18 from where he was arrested.