An innocent grandmother was locked in a police cell for four hours after detectives investigating a burglary were lead to the WRONG cash point.
Asifa Naveed, 44, withdrew £30 from a BP service station but nine days later her daughter called her to say police were at her home with a warrant for her arrest.
Confused Mrs Naveed politely obliged to go to Cambridge police station where she was thrown into a cell after being accused of BURGLARY.
The grandmother-of-one desperately pleaded her innocence as she was grilled by detectives about a raid on a disabled 87-year-old woman’s home.
Treasured possessions, £700 cash, and two bank cards were taken in the raid in Cambridge on August 10.
Detectives suspected Mrs Naveed as she had withdrawn cash at a BP garage at the same time the pensioner’s card was used at another BP garage in Cambridge.
Mrs Naveed was kept in a cell for four hours until her daughter Sophia, 19, found bank statements proving the mother had withdrawn £30 not the £250 the burglars stole.
The detectives were shamefully forced to admit their mistake and let Mrs Naveed, who has never been in trouble with the law, go free.
Retail manager Mrs Naveed, who received a letter of explanation from Cambridgeshire Constabulary, has now demanded an apology.
The mother-of-three said: “I begged them not to put me in the cells, I was crying and crying.
“I was really shaking. Then they started asking why I did the burglary and where I was when it happened and I was so confused.
“I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about.
“I couldn’t believe it. I have always been helpful to the police but now I have lost my trust in them.
“I am still having panic attacks and was distraught about it for about three weeks, I can’t even go to a cashpoint.
“My daughter did everything she could to get me out, if she hadn’t have looked at the amounts and hadn’t have done the police’s job for them I’d have been in there for a lot longer.
“I don’t want the officers to lose their jobs but I do want compensation and I will give any money I get to charity, but they must pay for what they have done.
“They came to my work and have upset the family. When they spoke to my daughter and said they wanted to question me about a burglary she thought they were having a laugh.”
Hayden Stevenson, 19, of Huntingdon, Cambs., and Jacob Hall, also 19, of Cambridge, were swiftly arrested when police realised the blunder.
The pair broke into a wall safe outside the pensioner’s Cambridge home, and used a key to gain entry at around 6.15am on August 10.
Hall was arrested hiding under a bed at his mother’s house and both men pleaded guilty to burglary at Cambridge Crown Court at the start of December.
A police spokesman said: “The officer who arrested Ms Naveed did so in good faith acting on information, believed to be correct at the time, which related to cash cards stolen in a burglary.
“Once it was established that the information which led to the arrest was incorrect she was promptly released without charge.
“The complaint was raised via the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and has been locally resolved.
“Ms Naveed received a letter of explanation from the officer involved and has since received written confirmation that the fingerprint record and photograph taken when she was in custody have been destroyed.”
An investigation by the IPCC into the arrest of Mrs Naveed concluded the officers acted “properly” in their honest need to investigate the line of inquiry.
Stevenson was sentenced to six months in a young offenders’ institution for another theft and 41 months consecutively in a young offenders’ institution for the offence against the pensioner.
Hall was handed a 45-month sentence in a young offenders’ institution.
