The crime branch officials caught a 26-year-old man, who had been threatening a Sion family with killing their daughter by using live CCTV footage of their residence available on the victim’s cellphone, which he stole around 10 days ago. The man — who managed to hoodwink the police once — had uploaded the couple’s daughter’s photo on Facebook and demanded `1 lakh for sparing her.
The victim’s mother had lost her Samsung Galaxy S3 phone to Suresh alias Rahul Devidas Hiwale (26) on September 14 while she was attending a function at Shanmukhanand Hall at around 9.30 pm. After registering a case at the Sion police station, the victim’s husband made a call to her cellphone when Hiwale answered. He demanded `5,000 in return for the cellphone and asked them to meet him at an ice cream parlour in Sion. The information was relayed to the Sion police when they decided to trap him.
The accused asked them to first give the money to the ice cream shop owner and later meet him at a Suvidha store to collect the cellphone. Hiwale, however, double-crossed the police where he headed to the ice cream parlour after calling them to the Suvidha store. “He then used the money for a trip to Tirupati Temple in Andhra Pradesh but soon exhausted the sum and needed more. In the meanwhile, he realised the victim’s family had linked their home’s CCTV cameras to the cellphone and began making threatening calls to the victim’s husband. He threatened to harm their
one-year-old daughter, uploaded her photo on Facebook with a caption saying “save her” and demanded `1 lakh,” said senior PI Vinayak Vast, who heads unit-4 of the crime branch.
After negotiating the amount down to `25,000, Hiwale was finally caught red-handed while accepting the cash at Chaityabhoomi in Dadar on Monday, where a trap was laid by API Sanjay Nikam and API Dilip Daingade. A DEd from Mumbai, he had left his residence at Chavan Chawl in Kandivali, and had resorted to theft to supplement his unemployment.