Hi,

I was driving through Mission road in Bangalore on 17th January 2012 around 12:30 pm in the afternoon when I had to halt because of a traffic pile up. While I was waiting for the traffic to clear, a man suddenly started hitting on my left side door saying I had hit his vehicle. He was shabbily dressed and at first glance he looked like a young tempo driver. I lowered my window and asked him what happened and started to turn back to see what had happened. Another man started hitting my right side door saying the same thing and while he distracted me like this, the man on the left side put his hand in the window, lowered it more and then reached out and picked up my Samsung S2 phone and put it in his pocket. All this happened in less than 5 seconds and by the time I turned to him he said 'ok ok now go from here'. It was very confusing and it took me a minute to realize that my cell phone was gone!

I filed an FIR in Sampangiramnagar police station which is less than 50 meters from where the incident happened. The constable told me he gets 5-6 complaints like this every month. I plan to block the number through the IMEI code and I want to warn other drivers so that they don't suffer similarly.

Please make sure:
1. If somebody bangs your window like this, do not lower it no matter what. keep your doors locked in the car and maybe only lower the windows an inch or so to speak to the person.
2. Wait for 2 minutes. These guys will not stay in the same spot for long. From inside your car with the windows down look back to see what they are referring to. Of course you will not find anything and they will just keep banging your doors.
3. Keep a pepper spray in your car for an emergency. If they try to break your window, spray it onto their face. They will take more than 2 hours to recover from that.
4. Do not display any expensive gadgets in your car's seat, dashboard etc.

All the best
Aditya