In a swift three-minute operation at two places, suspected burglars from Bihar decamped with several hundreds of cellular phones worth around ₹ 40 lakh from two cellular phone shops in the busy Angadi Bazaar area in the heart of Jagtial in the wee hours of Wednesday.
Jagtial inspector R Prakash said that the four-member gang wearing masks and hand gloves (to avoid identification of their faces in the CCTVs and to avoid leaving fingerprints) had arrived in a SUV vehicle and gained entry into the mobile shops by lifting the shutters using crowbars. They hurriedly dumped all the branded cellular phones into huge bags and shifted them into their vehicle.
Some of the gang members carried torchlights to identify the branded phones ranging from ₹ 5,000 to ₹ 50,000 and left the ordinary cell phones, that are priced lower.
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The gang members also searched for cash, but in vain. They had decamped with phones worth a total of ₹ 40 lakh (₹ 23 lakh and ₹ 17 lakh respectively).
The police have decided to analyse the video footage of visitors to the shops during the last one week or so and correlate with the burglary incident. SP Sindhu Sharma and other officials also visited the spot.