Roommate steals Rs 65k, passport from city techie

Uses stolen passport with his photo on it as ID proof for buying jewellery at airport

People staying in paying guest (PG) accommodations often have no choice but to trust the strangers they share the flat with.
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For a techie in the city, however, doing so resulted in a loss of Rs 65,000, his credit cards and his passport.

Srikanth Reddy N (25), a software engineer with IBM, has been staying as a paying guest at Service Hill on Nagwara main road.
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He was sharing the room with Madhura alias Abhi, who claimed to be a doctor working in a city-based hospital.

Sudden exit

On April 30, Madhura suddenly vacated the room while Reddy was at work. When Reddy came back home, he noticed that two of his credit cards and his passport were missing.

He tried to get the cards blocked from the respective banks, (ICICI bank and Citibank) but it was already too late.

The customer service personnel told him that his card was swiped to purchase gold jewellery worth around Rs 65,000 at a store at the Bangalore International Airport.

Madhura had also allegedly produced Reddy's passport, replacing the photograph with his own, as identity proof during the purchase.
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In his complaint to the KG Halli police on Sunday, Reddy has alleged that the staff did not verify his signature.

Has he escaped?

"Madhura might have flown out of the city. We are trying to get hold of the records," said a police officer from the KG Halli police station.