Under the cover of darkness, when Kandivali East’s roadside fruit stalls fell silent, a thief, identified as Ravi Chaurasia, a Mira Road resident,  would move in — not just to steal, but to stock his own business. For months, crates of the freshest and most expensive fruits vanished overnight, only to reappear 10 km away in Mira Road, where the accused allegedly sold them in plain sight from his own stall — until a trail of complaints by multiple local vendors and one auto-rickshaw led police straight to him.

The accused, Ravi Chaurasia, seen on CCTV during one of the alleged late-night fruit thefts in Kandivali East