Thieves strike 4 shops, flee with cellphones worth Rs 6L

Nagpur: Four mobile shops, including two on Godhni Road, were targeted in city in the wee hours of Monday by a car-borne gang. The thieves decamped with mostly Android mobile phones and cash worth more than Rs 6 lakh hitting the pre-Diwali mood of the traders hard. The traders at Saoner, where the thieves broke into a shop, had hit the street protesting police department's failure to rein in the gang that had been repeatedly targeting mobile phone shops in the city and district places without being nabbed till now.

City and rural police have now formed squads to probe the incidents that had taken place at Godhni road at Mankapur followed by Brahmi phata at Khaparkheda and Gadkari chowk at Saoner. Thieves failed to break into a mobile shop at Mankapur. They managed to flee with 38 phones and Rs 5,000 cash from a shop belonging to Pawan Ingle in the same vicinity.

CCTV footage and an eyewitness confirmed four masked persons wearing cap had gone towards Koradi road after stealing mobile phones in a car from Ingle's shop. "My loss is going upto almost to Rs five lakh," he said. The central locking system was damaged by the burglars and then the shutter was bent for sneaking into the shop. The other shop in the vicinity where the burglars made a failed bid seemed to have a better locking system that did not break despite an attempt being made.

This is second case of thieves targeting mobile phone shops this year. In March, nearly half a dozen shops in the city and rural areas were burgled in a similar manner by a car-borne gang. The cops had then speculated the gang to be based in Madhya Pradesh. Now too the cops have got CCTV footage and some fingerprints as clues. So far both city and rural police have failed to nab this gang.

DCP (crime) Sambhaji Kadam of city police and local crime branch in-charge Sanjay Purandare said the cops had already started various technical investigations and were also working on intelligence inputs.

In all 17 phones and Rs 12,000 cash were stolen from the shop at Gadkari chowk owned by Shailesh Hazari at Saoner once the gang sneaked into the town. In the other incident, the gang sneaked away with 24 phones worth Rs 51,560 from a shop owned by Rahul Chambhare at Brahmi phata in Khaparkheda.