New modus operandi come forward as the rate of street crime in the city continues to rise. A family that was robbed on Saturday night narrated to The News the novel way in which the gang which looted them operated.“On Saturday night, I was driving back home after visiting relatives during Eid,” Muhammad Arif said. When he reached near a famous Pizza outlet on University Road, he received a call from his older brother. Arif parked his vehicle by the roadside to attend to the call.“It was possible for me to drive while receiving a call but I preferred to not do so and follow traffic rules,” he said. “In the meantime, a healthy man came up to me and asked me to help him as his son had some serious disease.”Arif said that he gave the man Rs10 but he walked away without taking the money. “Before leaving, the stranger took had a good look inside my car. Meanwhile, another person approached me and started narrating his story but I simply ignored him,” Arif said.“I was about to end the call because my children were sleepy and were continuously asking me to drive home as fast as I could,” he said. “A third person walked towards my car and asked me if I had a toolbox because he had to fix something in his motorbike.”Arif said that he told the stranger that he did not have a toolbox and the person replied: “No problem, give me your cellular phone, wallet and other valuables.”“He also ordered my wife to hand over her gold to him,” Arif added. “The man was armed but he did not pull out his weapon because it was a public place and many vehicles were parked there and passengers were sitting inside. I told him that I did not carry a wallet and surrendered my cellular phones. When I said that my wife does not wear gold he got panicky.”“I realised that he might hurt us, so I asked my daughter to give him her handbag. She had all her Eidi in there,” the victim said. The child gave the robber her handbag, which had around Rs3,000 in it. She also removed her plastic rings from her fingers and gave those to the criminal as well.“The bandit collected cash, my phones and wife’s handbag and calmly walked to his motorcycle and left the scene,” Arif said. “My older son was telling me to crush the motorbike and the rider who had robbed them and deprived them of their Eidi.”He further said that later on his daughter told him that she had heard that another woman offered Rs100 to the person who had asked for help for his son, but the man had walked away from that woman, in much the same way as he had walked away from Arif and his family. Arif added that he then realised that all those people were probably part of the same gang.“They were not more than 30 years of age and all of them belonged to different ethnic groups,” he said.His ordeal did not end there, however. The next day, one of the robbers used the phone robbed from Arif to call up the latter’s relatives. “He told them to meet him at a particular place at the given time if they were interested in getting my things back,” Arif said. “I first had to bear a loss, and now they are trying to con my relatives.”The victim said he had tried to get his SIMs blocked but had been unable to do so till the time this report was filed. People have lost faith on the police so does that mean what Arif's son said about crusing the motorbike who robbed them is the only solution ?
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