After more than five and a half months, the Railway police have managed to solve a case of train robbery and arrested three persons from Maharashtra. Around 1.5 kg of gold ornaments worth ₹45 lakh was recovered from them. The robbed ornaments were part of the 2.3 kg of gold ornaments belonging to gold merchant Naveen Kumar, who was returning to Bengaluru from Mysuru on the fateful night of October 1, 2019.

Mr. Kumar, who sources gold ornaments from Mumbai, supplies them to the jewellers in Mysuru. After finishing his work in Mysuru, he boarded a Bengaluru-bound train at Mysuru Railway Station 8 p.m. Soon after he got in to the compartment, which was virtually deserted, five men entered and threatened him of dire consequences if he did not hand over the bag with the ornaments. Snatching it, they disembarked and fled from the station.

Taking up the complaint, a team of Railway police personnel constituted by Superintendent of Railway Police Bheemashankar S. Guled got to tracing the accused. Over a period of five months, the team worked on various clues including the CCTV footage taken from the railway station and finally zeroed in on Ramesh Pitnekar in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district on January 30, 2019.

While interrogating Pitnekar, the police learnt about the involvement of four more associates including three of his relatives.

They managed to arrest Maruti and Anant from Malangi and Valwad villages of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra. Two more accused are absconding.

Mr. Guled said the accused are in the age group of 35 to 45. While three accused are brothers, one of them – Ramesh Pitnekar – is their cousin. The police is in the process of tracing the whereabouts of two more accused.