Ambernath police arrest burglar based on tools left behind at crime scene

A hacksaw blade and a pair of pliers left behind by a burglar at the scene of crime led Ambernath police to arrest him within three days of the crime being discovered

A hacksaw blade and a pair of pliers left behind by a burglar at the scene of crime led Ambernath police to arrest him within three days of the crime being discovered.

A burglar leaves behind tools at crime scene, leading Ambernath police to search for him and arrest (HT FILE)

According to the Ambernath police, the Rajesh Mobile Store near the Ambernath Railway Station was found to have been broken into on the morning of October 2. The burglar had secured entry into the stock room of the store through the roof and decamped with high end cell phones and tablets worth ₹15 lakh.

A survey of the crime scene established that the accused had uprooted one corner of the tin roof and cut through the metal grills underneath to enter and exit the stock room. Before leaving, he had also taken the Digital Video Recorded (DVR) of the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras installed in the store. While this meant that the police did not have CCTV footage to aid them in their investigation, they did find the first clue in the form of the tools used by the burglar – a hacksaw blade and a pair of pliers.

“We first checked the CCTV footage of cameras installed around the burgled store and managed to get some footage of the accused. However, we could not get any visuals that had captured his face. We then started making inquiries in hardware stores in the area and found that someone had bought the same tools two days before the store was burgled. Fortunately, this hardware store had a CCTV camera that had captured the face of the customer clearly,” an officer who is part of the investigation said.

The officer added that the footage of the suspect was compared with the footage of the customer who had bought the tools from the hardware store and the police found that several features like height and gait of both the subjects matched. The police then circulated stills of the suspect’s face among their informants, and based on human intelligence, picked up the suspect, identified as Firoz Naeem Ahmed (33) from his Ambernath residence on Tuesday.

“We found stolen cell phones and tablets worth ₹10 lakh from Ahmed’s possession, after which we placed him under arrest on Tuesday night. After further interrogation, we also recovered a laptop computer, an iPad, a tablet and three cell phones that he had sold to an electronics dealer, which we suspect he had stolen from some other establishment. Inquiries into this aspect are under way,” the officer said.

Ahmed has been remanded in police custody till October 9, the officer added.