Shoplifters target laptop retail shops in Delhi

Sleek and aesthetically designed notebooks have caught the fancy of
shoplifters. In the last one-week only they have targeted Nehru Place-based
Triffin Technologies, Rajinder Nagar-based Arrow Technologies and Landmark
Technologies in Greater Kailash and lifted costly laptops. These bogus customers
target light-weight and costly laptops, which are comparatively easy to carry
and sell at good prices. 

The dealers informed that these laptop thugs pose as sophisticated and
serious buyers and usually try to become friendly with the showroom staff.
Describing the sequence of events Gurjeet Singh owner of Arrow Technologies
said, “The shoplifter who struck at our showroom tried to get familiar with
the showroom staff. He tried to engage the staff members in discussions about
the technological features of various notebooks so that nobody would be
suspicious about his moti-ves. Once he had the confidence of the staff he
disappeared with an Asus laptop.”

Singh also informed that when the thug was still inside the shop premises,
three or four more people walked into the showroom posing as customers, who were
apparently the thugs associates and provided him cover to disappear.

A similar event happe-ned at Triffin Technologies Nehru Place located Toshiba
showroom from where a Toshiba Satellite laptop worth Rs 70,000 was lifted
despite the fact that a CCTV camera is installed in the premises. Nitin Aggarwal,
CEO, Triffin Technologies informed, “The needle of suspicion is a man with
bulky physique wearing white kurta pyjamas who walked into our shop twice. Once
he came at around five in the evening and enquired about various laptop models.
The same person walked in again an hour later, this time he was followed by
three or four other customers as well. And within the next 10 minutes this
person escap-ed with a Toshiba laptop.”

Aggarwal informed that when he came to know about the theft and checked the
CCTV footage he was awestruck to find that the person who they were suspecting
was well aware about the fact that a closed circuit camera was insta-lled.
Aggarwal corrobora-ted, “It is pretty evident from the camera footage that
this thug was actually monitoring the movement of CCTV camera (since we have
moving camera which takes almost 16 seconds to rotate and come back to its
initial position) installed inside the showroom. He continuously stared into the
camera and walked away from the showroom once the camera altered its
position.”

Aggarwal also added that the shoplifter who cheated was not operating alone
but was rather a part of an organized gang that is specifically targeting retail
shops in Delhi.

A slightly different thing happened at Landmark Technologies wherein two men
were involved. Dinsh Kumar, Partner, Landmark Technologies explained, “A
person called N Sharma purchased a Compaq Pre-sario laptop from us (which was
supposed to be deli-vered to one Ajay Turkey) and promised to clear its payment
on delivery. When one of our emplo-yees took this laptop to Lotus Tower's at
Nehru Place Sharma asked my employee to accompany him to New Friends Colony
where he would make cash payment. But as soon as they reached New Friends Colony
Sharma disappea-red inside the colony ask-ing our employee to wait outside and
never returned back.”

Meanwhile, Aggarwal is planning to lodge an FIR with police and share camera
footage with the cops. Additionally, Aggarwal and Singh of Arrow Technologies
have also circulated e-mail messages to all the IT dealers informing them about
the incidents and physical characteristics of the thugs. Singh lamented,
“These events have become a regular affair in the IT market and to certain
extent we dealers operating in this market are only responsible for fanning
them. Due to our busy schedule we fail to communicate with our co-dealers about
these fraud, which is proving beneficial for thugs to strike at new targets
every time.”

Anjali Choudhary New Delhi, July 21