Four members of Maharashtra gold gang held in Secunderabad movie style theft case

Maharashtra gang came in two groups and stayed in two separate rooms in a lodge just 750 metres away from the gold shop where they committed movie-style theft under the cover of fake IT officials on Saturday morning, police investigation revealed. Four members of the gang were arrested by the police so far.

Secunderabad: Police have arrested four members of a robber gang who stole from a gold shop in Secunderabad's Monda market in a movie-style robbery under the cover of IT officials last Saturday morning. The accused Zakir, Rahim, Praveen, and Akshay have been arrested and the search is on for the remaining four, sources said. The police found that the accused had fled to Maharashtra after committing the theft and went there to make the arrests.

The accused are currently being interrogated in the task force office. Investigation revealed that from the 24th to the 27th of this month, the accused stayed in a lodge located at Patny Center in Hyderabad. On the 24th at 7.30 am, four others stayed at the same lodge at 3.30 pm. They came in two groups and stayed in two different rooms. The accused acted as if they did not know each other so that the lodge manager would not get any suspicion.

When the manager asked for their ID cards, the accused said that they didn't have physical copies of their Aadhaar and sent the virtual copies of the same on WhatsApp to the manager. The manager noted down the details of the cards. The manager thought the Aadhaar cards would be available on mobile WhatsApp and the printouts could be taken later.

But the miscreants deleted the Aadhaar cards using the 'delete to everyone' feature on WhatsApp. As a result, the two Aadhaar cards the manager received disappeared from WhatsApp. The lodge manager told the police that the photos of the Aadhaar cards were not downloaded immediately after receiving them.

Later, the robber gang committed a movie-style gold robbery inspired by hero Suriya's film 'Gang'. They pretended like IT officials and conducted a surprise check on the jewellery shop. They robbed 1.7 kilograms of gold biscuits saying that they were unauthorised.

On the 27th of May at 10.30 am, one of the accused told the manager that his mother had died and vacated the lodge room in a hurry. Two groups left the lodge after paying Rs 3 thousand for three days. The shop where the robbery took place was about 750 meters from the lodge.