Thief creates many disguises to evade Mumbai cops

Published: Oct 28, 2013, 08:08 IST | Vinay Dalvi

Seizing around eight PAN cards, cops say Mujjamil Tazdar, the main accused in the Thadani fraud case, was a master of disguises and created several bank accounts under various aliases

The main accused in the Anil Thadani case, in which Mujjamil Alam Tazdar, alias Sumit Gupta, illegally transferred Rs 12.58 lakh from Thadani’s bank account, is a master of disguises.

Mujjamil Alam Tazdar’s many looks. Tazdar hacked into Thadani’s account and stole Rs 12.58 lakh. Tazdar would keep updating his look and acquire new identities as per his aliases

Officials from the Property Cell of Mumbai Crime Branch said that each time Tazdar adopted a new alias, he would cultivate a new look and even create fake identification so as to avoid capture. For instance, if he adopted a Muslim alias, he would grow a beard to make it look more authentic, and if he adopted an alias such as Malhotra or Bajaj, he would cut his hair, spike it and sport spectacles.

Assistant Inspector Dilip Phulpagare, the investigating officer, said that when they caught Tazdar at ICICI bank at Dindoshi, he tried to flee but was knocked down by a BEST bus and broke his leg. “At first, Tazdar never revealed his real name to us. We then decided to search his home and we found that there were several PAN cards and voter identity cards with various names. In one, he had called himself Prakash Xavier and kept a French beard. In the other, he had called himself Sahil Khan and had a beard.”

Phulpagare added that Tazdar had several fake PAN cards and using these, he had opened various bank accounts. The police have seized around eight duplicate PAN cards from his house. Authorities added that Tazdar’s aim was to befriend accountants of rich people and promise them a commission, if they would take a cheque from their employees and transfer it into any of his several fake accounts.

“Tazdar, along with his accomplice, used this modus operandi in many cases in Navi Mumbai, Nashik and Kalyan area,” added a police official. They also added that they were yet to question Thadani’s employee, who is suspected to have given the bank details and the cheque to the accused.

The case
On October 17, MiD DAY reported how Anil Thadani, Raveena Tandon’s husband, had approached the authorities complaining that someone had hacked into his account and transferred money to the tune of Rs 12.58 lakh. During the course of investigation, it was revealed that in addition to Mujjamil Alam Tazdar and his accomplice Salim Usman Gani Sayyed, there was an employee of Thadani who might have helped the accused with the account number, balance and cheque details.

Mumbai: Cops hunt for thief after providing him directions to escape
