As the story goes, Muhammad Jameel was standing on the roadside, waiting to take a rickshaw on his way back home from work. He spotted a few vehicles and beckoned them to stop but when they approached him he could see they were full.
After waiting for quite a long time, desperation got the better of Jameel and he decided to walk it. Just as he picked up his briefcase and was ready to move, he spotted a rickshaw; it was coming towards him. Within moments, the vehicle had pulled to a side close to him. The driver asked him where he wanted to go. Jameel told him the location and negotiated the fare which worked out quite fine with both.
So far, so good. Pointing to a well-dressed man already seated inside, the rickshaw driver told Jameel he shouldn’t feel uncomfortable as the other "savari" would get off at the next street.
What followed was something completely undesirable. The driver took the rickshaw through a strange route, entering street after street till he reached a deserted place, close to a graveyard. Suddenly, the two men pulled out sharp-edged knives and, aiming at Jameel, robbed the latter of all his cash and belongings that included his mobile phone.
The rickshaw driver and his savari scooted away, leaving behind a disgruntled Jameel who was back on foot.
Lahore is witness to many such incidents where common people are dodged and then looted through premeditated deception plans. Luckily, these do not involve the use of brute force. The culprits carry out these acts through a careful interaction with the victims, building confidence in them and then robbing them.
Every other day, swindlers or tricksters seem to employ newer methods to dupe the gullible people. Sadly, the local police are unable to rein them in.
In other incidents, people are reported to have been robbed of their valuables while they were travelling to the city on rickshaws or taxis from Allama Iqbal International Airport. The victims are trapped by people posing themselves as passengers who are also carrying luggage pieces with tags of different airlines attached to them. They approach the arriving passengers, with tempting offers to share the radio cab fare. When the offer is accepted, they force the cab driver to take the ride to a place where robbing the unsuspecting passenger would be easy.
They don’t fear being apprehended as they are not carrying any weapons -- it is their accomplices who reach the ‘pre-decided’ spot who are armed with guns.
Reports show such tricks are often played without the knowledge of the rickshaw/taxi drivers who also sometimes become prey to the swindlers’ methods.
Such crime also takes place as the police do not take these ‘swindlers’ seriously; they hold the complainants equally responsible for falling into the trap. The complainants are also often ridiculed. "This [ridicule] was one reason why I stopped pursuing my case," says Mudassar Khan, a small trader, based in Samanabad.
Khan tells TNS that he was tricked, last year, by a person who impersonated as the conductor of the coach he was boarding for inter-city travel. "The guy had nothing to do with the bus service. He offered to help me place my luggage on top of the bus where it would be more secure. When I reached my destination, I was horrified to find that it was missing."
Khan says he wasn’t the only one whose luggage went missing. The bus owner refused to accept any responsibility, following which Mudassar Khan was forced to file a report with the police.
Unfortunately, his misery wasn’t going to end anytime soon. "Whenever I visited the police station, the cops would laugh at what had happened with me," he says. "They kept reminding me how I had ‘facilitated’ the culprits. I was an object of ridicule."
Babar Ali, Deputy Super-intendant of Police (DSP), says such criminals are often well-spoken and know how to play with human psychology. They are even known to "mesmerise their targets," he says. "They also keep changing their modus operandi which is why it is not easy to apprehend them."
According to Ali, it is therefore advised that "you should avoid interacting with strangers and certainly avoid flashing your belongings in public.
"The tricksters work in groups and they have different tasks delegated among them. Whereas some of them engage the victim in a conversation, others do the looting, still others help afford them a safe exit from the crime scene."
Numan Siddiqui, a staffer at TNS, recently lost cash and valuables in two separate incidents on the same day. In the first incident, his mobile phone was stolen, apparently by a person who was sitting in the rickshaw while Siddiqui was haggling with its driver for a possible ride pool.
In the second incident, a club-wielding "malang" requested him to stop his car in the middle of the road and started asking for alms money. Siddiqui reached for his wallet and was about to pluck out a rupee note when the malang grabbed hold of it and made away with all the money he was carrying.
A depressed Siddiqui decided not to report at a police station as he knew it would be a futile exercise.
Babar Ali, who has also served as DSP Badami Bagh, denies that the police have not taken such crimes seriously. He says an act of robbery that is executed after making the victim unconscious is treated like any other case of robbery and the culprit is tried under the same laws. Similarly, if a person dies after eating a food item accepted from a swindler, the latter is tried for a charge of murder.
Ali says the solution to this lies in educating people about the threats they face and also how to avoid falling into the trap of the swindlers.
He also says that the modus operandi of criminal groups shall be shared on the conventional as well as social media, and suggestions will be offered.
Inter-city travellers, relatives of patients admitted to hospitals, outsiders inquiring about road directions, people visiting police offices or courts to pursue cases are easy preys as their minds are already occupied and they cannot be on their toes all the time.