The city crime branch officials arrested one person for allegedly stealing nearly 2.66 tonnes of tomatoes and then later selling them to vendors at dirt cheap prices.
The city crime branch officials arrested one person for allegedly stealing nearly 2.66 tonnes of tomatoes and then later selling them to vendors at dirt cheap prices. The accused was caught after policemen on patrol duty discovered vendors in Sion area selling tomatoes at less than market prices and enquired about it.
The arrested accused has been identified as Ranjen Ramachandra Jaiswal (23) and is a resident of Sion Koliwada. Sources informed that Jaiswal stole a truck full of tomatoes early on Friday morning. The truck contained 2.66 tonnes of tomatoes.
“The accused went to a vegetable market in Santa Cruz and on finding an unattended truck of a wholesaler, made do with it. The tomatoes had to be supplied to various vendors in the city,” said a crime branch officer.
Sources informed that certain officials, who were patrolling the local vegetable market at Sion, noticed many hand cart vendors selling tomatoes at extremely low prices. “Tomatoes are currently very expensive but these vendors were selling it for low prices which we found suspicious. When the officers inquired with them, they could not give satisfactory answers,” said an officer.
Following that, the vendors were brought in for questioning. “When we asked them where they had bought the tomatoes from, they told us that a man claiming to be a wholesaler had brought these in a truck and sold it to them at cheap rates and subsequently they were also selling it at subsidised rates to customers,” said an officer.
The officials then started looking for the alleged wholesaler and found that he had done the same thing at Dadar vegetable market. He was traced and arrested at Sion Koliwada.
The officials also managed to recover nearly 1.98 tonnes of tomatoes. “He was going to sell them at other markets when we arrested him,” said the officer. Meanwhile the truck owner was also traced and was identified as Nasim Dilaver Kurasi (32), a resident of Dharavi.
The officials then registered an FIR at Santa Cruz police station and have remanded him to custody.
