The Arsikere police have arrested 11 persons for their alleged involvement in the theft of pepper worth over Rs. 1.09 crore and recovered the stolen goods from them. Bemused by the incident, the pepper growers in Hassan and Chikkamagaluru districts had urged the police to deploy police personnel to help them keep a vigil on their crops.
Navarathna Mal, pepper-grower in Mudigere, had filed a complaint on April 15 with the Arsikere police stating that unidentified persons had waylaid the vehicle carrying 335 bags of pepper near Javagal in Arsikere taluk and taken away the vehicle after assaulting the driver and his assistant.
The complainant had sold pepper to a merchant in Rajasthan. Meanwhile, the police found the truck abandoned near Kadur in Chikkamagaluru district. The driver and his assistant had been beaten up severely and their hands tied. The culprits had taken away more than 200 bags of pepper in a different truck. Raman Gupta, Superintendent of Police, told presspersons here on Thursday that a special team of officials had been formed to investigate the incident. The accused had taken the looted pepper bags back to Mudigere and tried to sell it to others. The police, however, succeeded in arresting all the persons allegedly involved in the case, before they could sell the item. The police have seized two trucks, two motorcycles and a four-wheeler, allegedly used for committing the crime.
The names of the arrested have been given as Arun Kumar (28) from Mudigere, Tabarak Hussain (28) and Rizwan Pasha (28) from Aldur in Mudigere taluk, Sami Ulla (25), Srinivas (24), Manjunath (33), Samapat Kumar (35) and Jagadish (42) from Devanuru in Kadur taluk, Sharath (21) from Kuruvangi in Chikkamagaluru taluk, Fazil (24) and Iliyas (27) from Chikkamagaluru.
