E-Paper
Ludhiana: 4th accused held for theft in Khanna temple
Three of his aides – Resham Singh alias Rinku, 32, of Sindhi Jhala of Udham Singh Nagar of Uttarakhand and Ravi Kumar and Honey of Mahinpur of Ropar — have already been arrested.
Wanted by the Khanna police for a temple heist case, another member of the gang has been arrested. Three members of the gang were arrested by the Khanna police four months ago. The accused has been identified as Mohit of Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh.
Khanna Superintendent of Police (SP, Investigation) Sukhamrit Singh Randhawa said the police arrested the accused from Aligarh following a tip-off. He added that three of his aides – including Resham Singh alias Rinku, 32, of Sindhi Jhala of Udham Singh Nagar of Uttarakhand and Ravi Kumar and Honey of Mahinpur of Ropar have already been arrested. Rajiv Kumar, alias Soni, of Lucknow of Uttar Pradesh, the jeweller who used to buy stolen jewellery from the accused, was also arrested.
The police had already recovered 3.6-kg silver, a bike and a piece of rope from the accused.
He added that on the night of August 14, the accused barged into the Shivpuri temple at around 3 am and fled after 3.40 am after stealing 3.6-kg silver. The accused also “vandalised” the idols. Later, the police found that the accused were out of the state by 5 am. After receiving a complaint from Subodh Mittal of Shivpuri Mohalla, the police lodged an FIR under Sections 331 (4), 305 and 299 of the BNS. After solving the case, the police added Sections 61 (2) and 317 (2) of the BNS in the FIR.
The SP added that Mohit is already facing trial in at least 12 cases registered in Dehradun, Delhi, Shimla, Ghaziabad, Lucknow and Karnataka.
Further, the SP added that the accused revealed that they used to make a Google search to find wealthy temples in India. Later, they targeted the temples for gold and silver. They had hatched a conspiracy to steal gold and silver from temples of Telangana and Tamil Nadu.
After the incident, the locals had blocked the national highway seeking the arrest of the accused.
