A fake friend

By: Arjun Singh Arora

Mr Gupta, Mr Rahul, Mr Sharma along with his driver were travelling to Pune from Mumbai. It was a rainy afternoon and Mr Sharma asked his driver to stop the car at some eating place. The driver stopped the car at a Burger King drive-thru, where only the driver ate one burger. Mr Sharma said, “I find Burger King very unhealthy’, to which Rahul replied, “Same here.”

Soon, Mr.Sharma asked his driver to stop the car at an eating place, where they could get some healthy food. The driver stopped the car at Mannat restaurant, which was about 100 km before Mumbai. Three of them asked the driver to take care of their briefcases while went to have their lunch at the restaurant.

It was around 3 pm and Mr Rahul was very hungry. He asked the waiter to bring idli and sambar. While Mr Gupta asked Mr Sharma about his driver’s sincerity, because he had approximately Rs 50 lakh in his briefcase.

Mr Sharma ignored and asked him to place his order and went to use the washroom. When he came back, Mr Gupta was talking to his wife on a call. He sat on the chair and ordered a pizza, while Mr Gupta ordered ‘roti and dal.’ They both had their food and ordered a sweet dish, thereafter.

When they went back to the car Mr Gupta found his briefcase missing. They asked the driver about the same to which he replied, “I had gone to the restaurant to use the washroom and to eat one sandwich and came back within 15 minutes. When I came back, I found that there was tampering with the driver’s door of the car and it was not closed properly.”

They called the police at the spot and informed the inspector about the whole incident. He arrested the driver because he thought that the driver had stolen the briefcase.

Next day, when the police couldn’t recover the briefcase from the driver. They went back to the spot and checked the CCTV footage of the restaurant’s camera. They saw two men had come on a motorcycle and has taken the briefcase from the car. The police investigated and found that the car belonged to Mr Sharma. Without telling anything to Mr Sharma, he asked Mr Rahul and Mr Gupta about what Mr Sharma was doing on that day. Both of them said, “He was continuously on the phone that day.”

The Inspector checked his call history and found that the calls were made to his neighbour and his wife. During the investigation, the police found that the motorcycle used by the thieves belonged to the same neighbour. Police rushed to Mr Sharma’s house and his wife opened the door. She told the police that her husband asked her to hand over the duplicate key to the neighbour as he had forgotten the keys inside the car and had locked the car from the outside.

On hearing this, the case became clear to the police that the driver was not the culprit, but Mr Sharma had taken the help of his neighbour to steal the briefcase of his friend.