Newspaper executive held for stealing iphone during awards ceremony in Taj

MUMBAI: The Colaba police on Tuesday detained a 54-year-old marketing executive of a regional newspaper for allegedly stealing an iphone 12 from the director of a pharmaceutical manufacturer on Saturday during an award ceremony at Taj.

Suruchi Athavale, director at Meyer Organics Pvt Ltd, went on stage to receive an award from the Maharashtra governor Ramesh Bais on behalf of her company when the accused took her phone from her handbag.

On Saturday, the Federation of Indian Export Organisation (FIEO) organised the Export Excellence Awards award function at Crystal Hall, which senior executives of various companies attended from across the country.

“Athavale had attended the program with several of her colleagues. As she left the hotel, she looked for her phone to call her driver but could not find it in her handbag. She then alerted the hotel staff, which cheeked the CCTV footage of the hall and found that some unknown persons had stolen her phone,” said a police officer.

She immediately lodged a case online, and considering the seriousness of the matter, a crime branch team had started investigating the allegations. “Our teams had a list of the visitors, including media persons. While checking the list, the police noticed that two visitors had not given their complete mobile numbers and had only mentioned nine digits.” said a police officer.

Police officials started tracing the iphone, which was switched off but still gave its locations, and found the two other numbers – matching the nine digits also at the same tower location, said a police officer.

The crime branch then picked up the marketing executive, a resident of Byculla West, and him over to the Colaba police station. A case was registered under section 380 (theft) of the Indian Penal Code.

“We have recovered the phone and given the accused a notice under section 41A of CRPC,” said the police officer. The police said the accused works with a regional newspaper as a marketing executive and went to attend the event using his identity cards, as the media house was invited to the event. He had taken his son along for the said event. “Both of them had mentioned only nine digits of their mobile numbers instead of ten digits to avoid being detected,” said the police officer.