Yangon police have captured two men who were caught on CCTV threatening a YBS bus driver with a stick and stealing passengers’ bus fares.
The incident took place on Monday onboard a bus operating on the No. 20 route.
The CCTV footage — which went viral earlier this week — shows two men who appear to be intoxicated get on the bus at one of its stops. The driver, probably noticing that one them has a stick in his hand, lets them come onboard.
Instead of filing into the vehicle however, the men hang out beside the driver and try to strike up a conversation with him.
The bus then stops at another stop, and the men ask for passengers coming onboard to hand them their bus fare.
They then harass the driver to give them more money but the driver points out that the fares go into the cash box. He also tells them that the box is locked, they ask him to give them their key, and he responds that the key is kept at the head office.
At the next stop, the driver pretends to take off his seatbelt, and tells the men, “I need to use the bathroom.” Realizing that the one person who could’ve opened the cash box is getting off, the men then stumble off the bus — but not without taking money from some new passengers — and the driver puts his seatbelt back on and promptly closes the door.
The owner of the company that operates the No. 20 route filed a case the next day against the then-unidentified men at the Hlaingtharyar police station, the Yangon Police Facebook page confirmed.
After launching an investigation, police were able to identify the culprits as Hlaingtharyar resident Yan Shin, 21, and Htantabi resident Thiha Soe, 30. Both were arrested late Wednesday evening.
The two face criminal charges for extortion under Section 386 of the Penal Code. Authorities are also interrogating them to determine if they are guilty of any other instances of extortion and/or theft.
