Mysuru: ‘Baap Numbri Beta Dus Numbri’ is a 1990 Bollywood comedy film where a con engineered by a father-son duo turns dastardly when the greedy father swindles his own widowed sister. While this Bollywood movie left the audience in splits, the story we are narrating here will remain etched in your memory for a long time and might even make you distrust even your close friends and relatives when it comes to cash and gold.

This is the story of a father-son duo from Mysuru who robbed their friends and relatives. Such experts they were in their criminal act, their victims did not have a clue about their clandestine activities even as they lost cash and valuables.

The father-son — 42-year-old Riyaz Shariff and his son 22-year-old Fayaz Shariff, residents of Hanumanthanagar in Mandi Mohalla in city — were arrested by the City Crime Branch Police in the first week of January in a case where Rs.23 lakh cash and 208 grams gold jewellery worth about Rs.6 lakh were stolen from the house of one Sunil on Dec. 31 on Pattegar Street in Mandi Mohalla. Investigating the case, the Police have now stumbled upon two more robberies committed by the father-son duo years ago and the revelations have surprised them as they had literally closed the case files as “undetected.”

Producer cheated: Riyaz and Fayaz used to befriend people after making sure that they had enough cash and gold. One of their victims was Antony Patrick alias Prem, who is the producer of a recently released Kannada movie ‘Athiratha.’ Prem was robbed by Riyaz Shariff five years ago, that is in 2012.

Prem owns a factory that makes aluminium sheets and Riyaz used to purchase them. Riyaz too owned an aluminium shop and never used to delay payments. According to Prem, he used to make payments on time and even borrowed loans from him (Prem) which he used to return on the agreed date.

“Sometimes, he used to bring huge amount of cash and give it to me telling me that there was no safe place at his house to keep the cash. I used to oblige him as he had gained my trust. Now I realise that while giving me cash, Riyaz used to observe the places where I kept cash and somehow he managed to make duplicate keys of the shelves,” Prem said.

“Riyaz was like my brother and he used to take my car often. Even in my wildest dreams I could not imagine that he would have made the duplicate keys. On October 10, 2012, I and my family had been to Bengaluru and my house was robbed and Rs. 7.5 lakh cash and 70 gram gold were stolen from a shelf in the bedroom,” Prem said.

The case was registered at the Narasimharaja Police Station. “When the Police asked me if I had suspected someone in the theft, I did not take Riyaz’s name as he was like my brother and I had given some other names to the Police. The case remained unsolved,” Prem said.

A Smart Alec that he is, in 2013, Riyaz again robbed Prem’s house and this time, he took away Rs. 1.5 lakh cash that was kept in the same shelf. “I had again complained to the N.R. Police and this case too remained unsolved,” Prem said.

Prem said that last year, Riyaz had borrowed some money from him for business and had removed a boy who worked in his shop. “The boy came to my factory and told me that Riyaz had information about the theft that took place in my house. Though I was taken aback, I did not suspect Riyaz and even if I had raised the issue, I feared that he would not return my money,” he said.

Prem said that Riyaz, who never defaulted on loan repayments, did not contact him since six months. “Only now when the Police have arrested him, I can connect the dots. It is really shocking how people close to you cheat,” he said.

ONE MORE THEFT

Police told Star of Mysore that during interrogation, Riyaz Shariff and Fayaz Shariff said that they took to crime as they had to conduct family ceremonies and lead a lavish life. Of the money robbed from Prem’s house, a part of it was used for the marriage of Riyaz’s daughter at Chamarajanagar.

The Police said that during his daughter’s wedding, he had robbed the house of his relative Shafiullah while the latter was at the ceremony. Here too, Riyaz used duplicate keys and stole Rs. 1 lakh cash and 100 grams gold. Police said that they had managed to recover all the gold stolen while the father-son duo had emptied the cash.

Riyaz Shariff and Fayaz Shariff were produced in a court on Jan. 12 and they are cooling their heels in the jail now. CCB ACP B.R. Lingappa supervised the nabbing operation by CCB Inspector R. Jagadish, ASI Chandregowda and staff M.R. Ganesh, Yakub Shariff, C.N. Shivaraju, Laskshmikanth, Niranjan, Prakash, Rajendra and Anand.