Two youth held in Delhi for thefts

Two youths hailing from Jammu and Kashmir, including an engineer, were arrested here for allegedly stealing luggage from hospitals and airports, police said today.

Rafiq Dar (27) and Irfan Malik (32), both from Srinagar, were arrested from Apollo Hospital in Sarita Vihar two days ago, Additional Commissioner of Police (South-East) Ajay Chaudhry said.

Dar is married and has two children and his father has a smalltime poultry business in Srinagar, while Malik is a B Tech degree holder from a private college in Faridabad and has a computer paraphernalia shop in Srinagar. He was also working as a tour and travel agent and was planning to go to Dubai.

The arrests came following investigations into a complaint that two mobile phones of a patient were stolen from Apollo Hospital here.

"CCTV footage were analysed and one suspect was zeroed down who could be seen roaming unnecessarily in the very part of the hospital where the patient was recuperating. He was again seen on December 10 morning wandering in the hospital.

"He was intercepted and put to questioning. He revealed his name as Rafiq Dar and confessed to have committed the said theft. He also named Malik, who was also apprehended from the Apollo Hospital complex itself," Chaudhry said.

Dar had come to Delhi with his father long back on a few occasions for treatment. After leaving the school, he got involved in his father's smalltime business of poultry.

However, he fell in bad company and started committing petty thefts. Since he was familiar with hospital activities, he knew that it was very easy to pick luggage or belongings of the patients in hospitals.

He has allegedly committed bag-lifting from hospitals in the past also, but was never caught. He also befriended Malik, whom he knows since childhood, and Rafiq was providing him stolen laptops.

"They had come to Delhi by air on December 8 and lifted two bags from the airport also. The duo has also disclosed that they had stolen a bag containing a laptop and some other documents from City Hospital near Karol Bagh on December 9," Chaudhry said.

Interestingly, he said a photograph of Fortis Super-Speciality Hospital, a lot of Pan-Cards, Laptops (2), Mobile phones (6), Photo-IDs of other persons, used garments and cosmetics have been recovered from them.