The Thane Police have arrested a gang of 13 people wanted for a wide range of crimes, including chain snatching, cheating senior citizens into handing over their jewellery, and “buying” valuables from gullible citizens in exchange of bundles of plain paper hidden under one genuine currency note.
According to police officers, the arrests were the result of a month-long investigation conducted by a special squad working under the supervision of Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone I) D.S. Swami to tackle the rising number of such offences in Zone I.
The accused, Raju Shetty, Rameshkumar Jaiswal, Vilas Dalvi, Dinesh Suradkar, Sanjay Mahangade, Rafique Manihar, Ganesh Londe, Sharbon Islam, Shankar Murgheshan, Pradeep Patil, Krishnakumar Singh, Arjun Salat and Arjunbhai Marwadi, were picked up from various locations in Thane, Mumbai and Gujarat.
“The gang employed several methods to cheat people. Some of them would visit temples where they would engage people in religious discussions to win their trust and then offer to buy their jewellery for a much higher price than the original. They would pay with dummy notes and leave. In other cases, they would pose as policemen and convince people to hand over their jewellery for safe-keeping, saying they were passing through a robbery-prone area,” Mr. Swami said.
The special squad examined CCTV camera footage of the areas where such offences had been reported, mapped the movements of the accused and identified them based on their criminal records. “Our squad examined footage from nearly 400 cameras over one month to get a sense of their regular areas of operation and their modus operandi,” Mr. Swami said.
The police claim to have solved 40 cases registered in the Thane commissionerate with the arrest of the gang, including some cases of chain snatching.
“We have recovered ₹30,000 in cash and 661 grams of jewellery, collectively worth ₹ 20.03 lakh from the accused,” Additional Commissioner of Police (West region) Satyanarayan Choudhary said.