Raipur: At least 10 people were arrested for their alleged involvement in a robbery at a house at Anupam Nagar in Raipur.
While a joint team of Raipur Police and Anti Crime and Cyber Unit arrested the accused from different places at Nagpur in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh within 36 hours of the incident, it has come to fore that the robbery was the handiwork of the sister of Manoharan Velu whose rented house was looted on February 11. The robbers who were wearing Army fatigues held Manoharan and his sisters who stay with him in the house hostage and looted Rs 60 lakh before fleeing.
IGP Amresh Mishra said one of Manoharan's sisters, who does not stay with him, had planned the robbery at her brother's place with the help of one of her friends who is a retired Subedar Major of BSF. He said Manoharan's sister, whose identity was not revealed, was unhappy with distribution of family property and had given the task to the retired BSF Subedar Major identified as A Som Shekhar. The robbery was committed by five people while the others helped them. Mishra said the accused divided the money they had looted from Manoharan's house among themselves.
Manoharan said he was sitting in his house with his family at D 14 in Anupam Nagar when two persons entered forcibly and told them that there was a complaint against them and they were there to investigate. They then held Manoharan and his sisters hostage at gunpoint by tying their hands and feet. They then looted cash and jewellery from the house and fled. While fleeing the accused took away the mobile phones of the family members. Manoharan said his sisters Prema and Rajni were in the house at the time of robbery and the former sleeping in one of the rooms.
Mishra said 10 teams of Crime Branch were formed to solve the robbery. The victim and his two sisters were questioned in detail regarding the incident. Blockades were put up in the border districts. Along with the dog squad and forensic team, the technical team of Crime Branch was also deployed to collect evidence from the scene of crime. The technical team of Crime Branch scanned the footage of CCTV cameras installed around the incident spot. A woman wearing a yellow salwar suit was seen in the CCTV footage. The woman had tied a scarf on her face and four men were also seen with her. Two of the four people were in army uniform. The fifth accused reached the spot in a white car without a number plate. The police, as part of investigation, raided locations at Rajnandgaon, Durg, Bilaspur, Nagpur, Baloda Bazar, Raipur and questioned the suspects. During interrogation, the accused confessed to have committed the robbery.
Police investigation revealed that Shekhar had retired from the BSF as a Subedar Major in 2011. Currently, he is associated with an NGO named Real Help. Along with this, he also works as a land broker. Som was close to Manoharan's family and was well aware of the money kept in the house. He planned the robbery with his partner Devlal Verma, who is an electrician, and Kamlesh Verma, who was Devlal's driver. Mishra said one of the accused Shahid Pathan had previously been jailed in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra in a case of breach of trust. The other accused are Purushottam Devangan, Ajay Thakur, Rahul Tripathi and Neha Tripathi of Nagpur, Maharashtra and Shahid Pathan and Pintu Sarwan of Bilaspur. The IG said police recovered gold and silver jewellery along with Rs 59.50 lakh in cash from the accused.
