Nine held for multiple robberies across States

Chance arrest of member leads police to entire gang

June 26, 2019 01:52 am | Updated 01:54 am IST - Mumbai

Lucky break:  Police pose with the accused and seized material in Kalyan on Monday.

Lucky break: Police pose with the accused and seized material in Kalyan on Monday.

The chance arrest of a history-sheeter with a stolen motorcycle in Kalyan on Monday led the Thane police to a highly organised inter-State gang of robbers with cases registered against them in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

According to officials, personnel from the Anti Robbery Squad led by sub-inspector Avinash Palde on Monday stopped a man on a bike in Kalyan for routine inquiries. They had been asked to keep an eye out for such suspects due to the increase in number of cases of people being robbed by bike-borne assailants.

“We checked the details of the bike and found that it had been used in a robbery committed in the jurisdiction of the Narpoli police station in Bhiwandi, after which we arrested the accused, identified as Ilayaraja Keshavraj. He, however, refused to answer any questions, and kept saying, ‘No Hindi, only Tamil’ over and over again,” an officer with the squad said.

The mastermind

The police then sought the help of a local resident from Tamil Nadu to question Mr. Keshavraj, who allegedly told them that he was part of a larger gang and that their leader was going to conduct a robbery on a Punjab National Bank branch in Kalyan later in the day.

“We rushed to the branch in plainclothes and took up positions around it. There were around seven of us and at that point, we only knew that the gang leader, Saloman Gogula, would be trying to rob the bank along with four to five others. However, Mr. Gogula turned up with seven others and we found ourselves outnumbered. We then called for reinforcements but waiting for them to arrive was not an option, as the robbers were getting ready to strike,” the officer said.

Without further ado, the squad approached the accused just as they were going towards the branch, leading to a scuffle. The personnel managed to keep all eight suspects pinned down for 10 minutes till seven to eight more policemen, who had been diverted from assignments nearby, came rushing to the scene. The eight accused were then arrested.

“Inquiries till now have revealed a carefully planned out modus operandi. The accused would buy motorbikes on a second hand basis but never transfer the ownership in the Regional Transport Office records. These bikes would be used as getaway vehicles in robberies. If the accused were ever stopped in routine nakabandis, they would claim they had only borrowed the bikes from their original owners. They also destroyed SIM cards immediately after using them while committing crimes to make tracking them all the more difficult,” the officer said.

The police have recovered three motorbikes, three sickles, two daggers, red chilli powder, lengths of rope and 25 SIM cards from the accused, and are interrogating them further, officials said.

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