Suspect held in east Delhi snatching case, question mark over 2 e-FIRs

NEW DELHI: Police have arrested one of the suspects in the Laxmi Nagar snatching case where an elderly woman was targeted by two men on bike. The suspect, Karan, cops said, was involved in several cases of robberies and snatching in east Delhi. On Monday, after it emerged that two e-FIRs were registered in the same incident, the police clarified that these were lodged by them.They said that after one of the files got corrupted, another was uploaded.
The victim, Maya Yadav, claimed that the e-FIRs were filed without her knowledge. Earlier, she had alleged that she was misled by cops into filing an eFIR under sections of theft. The 61-year-old had also claimed that she was being pressured to retract her statement to “avoid getting into legal hassles”.
While the incident took place on Tuesday, the e-FIRs were filed on Thursday. To lodge an e-FIR, one has to furnish details like name, mobile number and e-mail address. Once these details are fed into the software, a one-time-password (OTP) is generated that needs to be verified to proceed further. Yadav told TOI that she hadn’t received any OTP.
The e-FIRs, accessed by TOI, were registered separately in Hindi and English. Both were filed under section 379 (theft) of IPC. “I was not aware of any e-FIR being registered in my name. When I had dialled 100 (at the time of the incident, the cops had come and questioned me. They insisted on making a theft case out of it, despite my protests,” Yadav claimed.
Nearly a week after the incident, Yadav claimed that she was yet to get a copy of the FIR. “I just want the men to be caught and questioned as to why they acted so violently. I approached the police for help, but they tried to hush up the incident,” she said.
On Sunday, the investigating officer of the case was sent to district lines even as an inquiry was initiated against him.
A retired power corporation employee, Yadav claimed: “They wrote (in the FIR) that I had a lot of bags and I had kept them on the staircase, including my handbag. As per the police version, they took my handbag from the ground and fled.” The incident happened when Yadav was returning home after buying vegetables. CCTV grabs showed that she had hung a packet of vegetables on the gate and was looking for her keys in her handbag when two men, riding without helmets, tried to snatch her handbag. As the men tugged at her bag she was dragged onto the road.