Think twice before accepting friend requests from unknown people on Facebook.
A Delhi resident learnt it the hard way when he invited a Facebook friend over for a party and woke up the next day to find his prized possessions gone.
The Delhi Police have arrested a 27-year-old scrap dealer, who, in the last one year, befriended 10 people using fake profiles and robbed them clean after a night of booze-fuelled party at their homes. After every theft, he sold off the loot on OLX and deactivated the profile and mobile phone number he had used to contact his victim.
The law caught up with Imran alias Sonu after Kishan Gopen Meitei from north Delhi’s Timarpur filed a police complaint in the second week of May.
Meitei said he became friends with Sonu in March and used to chat with him regularly on Facebook’s messenger app. A fortnight ago, Sonu suggested the two meet for a night of drinking and Meitei agreed to host the party at his house, which he shared with a friend.
On the fateful night, Sonu kept refilling the glasses of the two men but emptied his own glass in the wash basin. Meitei and his roommate soon passed out and Sonu made away with their cash, laptops, expensive watches, sunglasses and four smartphones.
Meitei and his friend put two and two together the next morning and approached the Timarpur Police. Sonu had already deactivated his fake profile and mobile number but a second number he had used to contact Meitei once landed him in police custody on Monday. A senior officer said he had confessed to 10 such thefts across the city in the last one year.
“But we have received only one complaint so far,” the officer said.
It was not immediately clear if the police recovered any of Meitei’s possessions. Joint commissioner of police (crime) Ravindra Yadav said Sonu was arrested by a team led by ACP Sanjay Sehrawat and inspector PC Yadav.