NRI woman robbed on way
from Sahar airport
MUMBAI: JANUARY 14, 2005
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
An NRI on her way home from Sahar Airport was waylaid and
robbed on Thursday. Olga Pereira, a retired executive in her
mid-50s, arrived by a British Airways flight at 1 am and was
making her way home when a Santro blocked the path of her
car. Two men with choppers emerged, smashed her car windows,
and fled with her luggage and Rs 3 lakh in cash and valuables.
The crime took place a kilometre away from the airport.
Only last year, TOI had highlighted the danger of the stretch
between the international airport and Mahim and the growing
incidence of highway robberies here. Numerous tourists arriving
by late-night flights have been robbed on this route either
by cabbies or armed gangs. Police commissioner A N Roy had
even deployed beat marshals for a round-the-clock patrol of
the highway. On Thursday, however, there were no policemen
on the airport route to rescue Pereira, who stumbled up to
Sahar police station an hour later to register a complaint.
According to senior police officers, an average of four robberies
take place on the airport-to-Mahim stretch every two months,
and not every incident is reported. In many cases, foreign
tourists are shunted from one police station to another when
they go to lodge a complaint.
In the past, the underworld has also been been active in
highway robberies, keeping a watch on foreign tourists and
other passengers at the airport taxi stands and following
them to a secluded spot before intercepting them.
The end of 2003 saw at least two major cases of tourists
being robbed on the Western Express Highway near the international
airport. A British national, Dipankumar Patel, who hired a
taxi from Sahar to Ahmedabad, was robbed of US $4,000 by three
unknown men near the Vakola flyover at around 4 am. The Vakola
police arrested the taxi driver, but no further arrests were
made. A few weeks before that, a 26-year-old Dutch researcher,
Stephanie Koot, was robbed of cash and valuables on the highway
near Vile Parle. The case remains unsolved.
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