Pune : Yemeni couple loses more than Rs 4 lakh to fraudsters posing as cops

Around 4.30 p.m. on February 8, two men dressed as policemen stopped and stole Rs 4.79 lakh from a Yemeni couple at Ashirwad Chowk in Kondhwa.

The victims are a 52-year-old national from Yemen and his spouse, who have been residing in a Meetha Nagar rental apartment since December of last year. The woman is presently receiving cancer treatment at a private hospital in the city.

According to a Kondhwa Police officer, the couple was stopped by two men in a four-wheeler on February 8 as they were returning home from the hospital. A “police ID card” was flashed by one of them. They claimed that the couple’s movements were suspicious and spoke to them in Arabic before asking them to reveal their possessions. The couple distracted themselves and drove off with the cash after providing their medical records and displaying the cash they were carrying.

According to a senior Kondhwa Police official, they are pursuing specific leads in order to make an arrest. One of the main obstacles to such case investigations is language. The victims from Yemen speak neither the local language nor English well. They take time to report these kinds of crimes. An excessively long time to file complaints means that the best opportunity to gather evidence is lost. Typically, they enlist the assistance of a translator in order to file police complaints

Moreover, Santosh Sonawane, Kondhwa Police said, “In 2023, with the help of the Yemen Embassy, we held a meeting with the Yemenis residing in Kondhwa asking them to keep their documents and cash in a safe place.”