Abduction of Infosys Employee on Mumbai Pune Highway - Travelers, Please Be Careful

This post is in view of the increasing number of unpleasant incidents faced by people traveling towards Mumbai.

As you must be reading in newspaper about the recent incident of Vikram Pottdar, a PM with EMEA, Infosys who was abducted when he hitched a ride from Wakad Chowk for Mumbai.

Cybage employee Piyush Sharma has been missing since January of this year. The last information received from him was that he was traveling towards Mumbai.
Since then Piyush is not traceable.

The information being circulated about one such incident states that:
A car stopped at the Wakad chowk, offered him a lift to Mumbai, took him through the Old Pune Mumbai Highway, offered him coffee/juice which was drugged. After he was robbed, he was thrown out of the car. In this incident, the victim was unlucky as the effect of the sedatives was strong enough to cause death.

This is one of the many abductions and extortion incidents that has happened recently on the Pune- Mumbai expressway.

In the state of intoxication, victims usually end up sharing all confidential information such as PIN numbers, personal information, etc. The abductors then use this to withdraw money on ATM cards and make indiscriminate use of credit cards. 

While traveling towards Mumbai or for that matter anywhere, please ensure that you use a safe mode of transport like Public Transport or authorized/ recognized transport services.