Gurugram woman traces phone snatcher with smartwatch, hits him, grabs it back

A woman, last month, chased down a man who snatched her mobile phone in Sector 23, Palam Vihar, and grabbed it back from him after punching him in the head, police said on Tuesday, adding that an FIR in the matter was registered only on Monday and the perpetrator is yet to be arrested.

According to police, the incident took place when Pallavi Kaushik (28), a resident of Sector 23, Palam Vihar, who works as a senior merchandiser with a city-based firm, was grocery shopping at the Huda market in her neighbourhood around 6pm on August 28. She told police that a man kept peering over her shoulder while she paid the bill via UPI, and suddenly snatched her phone and fled.

Also read: Two held for running illegal parking lot in Gurugram Sector 48

Police said she raised an alarm, but no bystander reacted. She then started chasing the man herself. She sprinted after him for about 200m, but he managed to get away. Pallavi then decided to try and track her mobile phone’s location via her smartwatch, which kept beeping to indicate that her phone was in the vicinity. She wandered the bylanes of Sector 23 for about three hours and managed to track the exact location of her mobile phone around 9pm. Police said Pallavi saw the man sitting on a parked motorcycle on a street corner, using her mobile phone.

“I panicked after losing my phone as it had all my contacts and work-related important data. Thus, I kept wandering the bylanes till 9.15pm in an attempt to track him with help of the watch. I finally spotted him sitting on a motorcycle parked on the corner of a narrow lane,” Pallavi said.

Pallavi said she approached the man clandestinely from behind and punched him hard in the head, while trying to overpower him.

“He tried to break free and my phone fell from his hands. He fled, leaving my phone behind. I picked it up and returned home. The next day, I submitted a complaint at the Palam Vihar police station,” she said.

Police said that during the three hours Pallavi was looking for the man, he used her UPI PIN to transfer ₹50,865 from her bank account to other accounts.

Also read: Nigerian national held with heroin in Gurugram

Police added that they initiated a probe based on her complaint, and registered an FIR under sections 379 (theft), 379A (snatching) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code on Monday night.

Asked about the delay in the registration of the FIR, Manoj Kumar, assistant commissioner of police (Udyog Vihar), said, “I came to know about the complaint on Monday and immediately directed the FIR registration. Necessary action will be taken against the person found responsible for the delay.”

“We have got details about a few bank accounts of a private firm in Mumbai into which the suspect had transacted money using Pallavi’s phone. Police are trying to nab him,” he added.