A 31-year-old man, who used his proficiency in several foreign languages to attract tourists as a tourist guide and cheat foreigners of thousands of rupees, was arrested in Colaba on Friday night.
Colaba Police arrested Ganesh Chawan, a resident of Navi Mumbai, near his house on following a tip-off. According to the police, Chawan revealed during interrogation that his fluency in various foreign languages helped him commit his crimes.
“He used to get close to the tourists using his language efficiency and he would guide them throughout in Mumbai. He would invite them for dinner and used to discuss visiting other places all over India. He used to assure them that he would give them a nice package at reasonable rates to visit other places in India. Once the victims were convinced, he would ask for money for booking tickets and then used to vanish from the place with their money,” a senior official from Colaba police station said.
Police said Chawan had cheated some French nationals of Rs 56,000 on Monday. He had asked them to get the cash from their bank account and had later vanished with the money after saying he needed to check the authenticity of the notes, they said.
“He was fond of wearing branded clothes, shoes and using costly perfumes. Police has recovered electronic gadgets like i-Pods, cameras, wallets and some gold jewellery from his possession,” said PSI H Borse. With Chawan’s arrest, police claimed to have solved four cases of robbery of foreign tourists. They said they are also investigating about Chawan’s previous cheating cases.
In a recent earlier instance of foreigners being cheated, a 60-year-old man was arrested on October 11 for stealing from foreign nationals.
