Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar transferred the senior inspector of Market Yard police station after a reported robbery of Rs 35 lakh was recorded as a Rs 1 lakh property-missing case, while police later recovered Rs 25 lakh from two suspects arrested in an unrelated robbery attempt.
The businessman who lost the cash had visited Market Yard police station several times to report the robbery, according to Kumar. The station staff recorded the incident as a missing-property case instead of registering it as a robbery, the Commissioner told the Times of India on Wednesday.
Kumar described the recording of the incident as a “suppression of crime”. The robbery took place on October 9 in the Market Yard police station jurisdiction. The cash was being carried by an Angadia on behalf of the businessman when the incident occurred.
The case came to light during an investigation by Swargate police into a separate robbery attempt on September 23. In that incident, two men allegedly attempted to rob a Market Yard shopkeeper carrying Rs 4 lakh while he was travelling home. A young woman intervened, preventing the theft, according to the report.
Swargate police arrested the two suspects in connection with that case on Tuesday and questioned them. During interrogation, the suspects allegedly told investigators that they had robbed an Angadia of Rs 35 lakh in the Market Yard area on October 9.
The disclosure led Swargate police to connect the suspects with the earlier case, which fell under the jurisdiction of Market Yard police. Police subsequently recovered Rs 25 lakh from the two men, Commissioner Kumar said.
The episode has brought attention to the importance of accurate crime classification at the police-station level. A robbery complaint and a property-missing report trigger different investigative responses, and the initial recording of an incident determines how the case enters police records and how resources are assigned to it.
In this case, the discrepancy between the reported loss of Rs 35 lakh and the recorded missing-property value of Rs 1 lakh was identified only after another police unit investigated a separate incident. The recovery also followed questioning in that separate case rather than the original complaint at Market Yard police station.
The Pune Police Commissioner’s action includes the transfer of the Market Yard police inspector. The report does not specify the inspector’s name, the exact location of the robbery, or whether further departmental proceedings have been ordered. It also does not state whether the remaining Rs 10 lakh has been recovered.
The immediate next step is the continuation of the police investigation into the October 9 robbery and the action taken against personnel responsible for recording the complaint. The recovered amount and the suspects’ alleged role will be subject to the further investigation by Pune Police.
