Eight of inter-state gang held in Telangana; 40 bikes seized

HYDERABAD: An inter-state gang of bike thieves was busted by Suryapet police and 40 bikes worth Rs 22 lakh were recovered from their possession. After a series of bike theft cases were reported in Suryapet town, district SP R Bhaskaran formed three special team to solve the cases.
Police analysed CCTV footage near the crime scenes and, by working on the leads for four months, arrested eight members of an inter-state gang, including main accused Chall Prabhakar of Tallampadu village in Khammam.
Apart from Prabhakar, police also arrested stolen bike receivers B Swamy, from Perika Singaram village, B Upender from Kusumanchi, U Sitaramulu and M Satish, both from Muthyalagudem, G Venkatesh from Chegomma village, J Chiranjeevi from Lokya Thanda and K Naveen from Mellepally village, all from Khammam district.
Based on the confession of the accused, police recovered 40 bikes worth Rs 22 lakh from their possession. Among the recovered vehicles, 13 were stolen from Suryapet, five from Khammam, four from Kodad, one each from Hyderabad and Hanamkonda in Telangana, four from Nandigama, six from Jaggayyapet of Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh and details of the remaining vehicles were yet to be ascertained.
During the interrogation, Prabhakar confessed that he had incurred loss in the fast food centre business at Kusumanchi. To overcome financial problems, Prabhakar started committing bike thefts from March 2021 on the advise of the other accused, mostly bike mechanics.
Prabhakar mostly committed the offences alone and he used to travel to busy areas of the towns in bus with a helmet in the bag and commit theft of bikes during the day time in crowded areas to avoid easy identification by police through CCTV footage analysis.