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PUNE: A 21-year-old man, whose modus comprised fear of cockroaches, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly molesting a homemaker in the lift of a gated housing society off NIBM Road in Kondhwa on Saturday.

The Kondhwa police identified the suspect as Saiful Sattar Mughal (21), a native of Junagadh in Gujarat, but staying in Kondhwa Khurd for the last four years. “We established his identity on the basis of images captured by the CCTV cameras installed in the lift and at other places in the housing society,” an officer from the Kondhwa police said.

Senior inspector Milind Gaikwad, in-charge of the Kondhwa police station, told TOI, “After registering the homemaker’s complaint, a police team led by sub-inspector Vishnu Wadkar collected the CCTV footages from the housing society. We worked on certain clues and established Mughal’s identity, following which we got details of his residence. Accordingly, we laid a trap outside his society and took him into custody when he was on his way to his residence.”

The officer said during questioning, Mughal admitted of molesting the homemaker in the elevator on Saturday. “He also admitted of molesting two other women. We will reach out to these women and counsel them to register complaints against the suspect so that we can take appropriate action against him. A proposal to take preventive action against him will also be initiated at the earliest,” Gaikwad added.

On Mughal’s modus, the officer said, “The suspect told police that most women are scared of cockroaches, and he used this fear to his advantage to molest them. He would tell the women that there was a cockroach on their body and would touch them inappropriately in his bid to remove the insect.”

It is suspected that the scared women did not pay much attention to his touches as they were in a state of panic. “Even if a woman would have notices his inappropriate behaviour, they chose not to file complaint which emboldened him,” another officer from the Kondhwa police said.

Lift was the place of choice since his targets couldn’t move out of it immediately. “There was no way women could get out of the moving elevator when told that they had a cockroach moving on them,” Gaikwad said, adding, “And this is what he used to his advantage.”

Police investigations have revealed that Mughal had visited the gated society in Kondhwa to meet his employer for some official work. “Mughal used to work as an office boy at a private firm in Uruli Kanchan . His employer stays in the same society, in the lift of which he molested the homemaker on Saturday,” the officer said.

Mughal has been charged for committing an offence under Section 354 (molestation) of the Indian Penal Code . “He will be produced before the Pune Cantonment court on Wednesday,” Gaikwad said.

