Pune: In a relief to two elderly women robbed of gold ornaments worth Rs8.5 lakh by three men on Sept 7, the Pimpri Chinchwad crime branch arrested the trio on Thursday and recovered the entire booty before they could sell it.The incident occurred when a 76-year-old woman of Andheri in Mumbai and her younger sister (72) of Bengaluru wanted to go from Wakad to Khopoli and were offered a lift by the three men. The women lodged a complaint with the Hinjewadi police on Sept 11.Senior police inspector Arvind Pawar led the crime branch team which traced the trio to Ravet. The men were identified as Abasaheb Madane (35) of Dehu Road, Kailas Tonape (32) of Dighi and Vaibhat Suryatal (30) of Ravet. “The entire jewellery was recovered and Madane’s car used in the crime seized,” he told TOI.Madane faces a case of cheating registered with the Pune Rural police and is a real estate agent. Suryatal worked in an IT company, but had been unemployed for the last few months. Tonape runs a small construction-related business, Pawar said, adding: “The three friends needed money and robbed the women on spotting an opportunity.”The officer said that in the first week of Sept, the two women went to Indapur to meet another sister. On Sept 7, they took a bus from Indapur to Swargate and another to reach Khopoli to meet their brother. The conductor requested them to alight at Wakad and take another bus at 2.30 pm, since his vehicle was going via the Pune-Mumbai expressway.“The women were waiting for the bus, when the trio noticed them. They told the women they were headed to Khopoli and offered a lift in their car,” he said.The officer further said the men drove the women around for two hours and then went to Katraj tunnel. They used a knife to threaten the elderly women and snatched their gold jewellery worth Rs8.5 lakh. “The trio left the women inside the tunnel and fled. The women managed to walk out of the tunnel and were told they were in Katraj. A car driver dropped them to a bus stop and they took a bus to Khopoli,” he said.The women told the police that the trio were in a red sedan. The police checked all red cars near the crime scene on Sept 7. “We zeroed in on one car and found its registration number was fake. We checked footage of over 100 CCTV cameras. We took the trio into custody on a tip-off. They were handed over to Hinjewadi police for further investigation,” Pawar added.
