Gujarat: Interstate metro cable theft gang busted; 4 held with 368 kg copper wire

The accused identified themselves as part of the Khekada (also spelt as Khekra) Gang, named after their home village in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district: Police

Ahmedabad: The Gandhinagar police on Saturday arrested four men from Kalol, Gujarat, allegedly part of a 13-member interstate gang suspected to be behind 35 metro cable thefts across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi, and Madhya Pradesh, and recovered over 368 kg of processed copper wire worth ₹8 lakh.

Over 368 kgs of processed copper wire worth ₹8 lakh was recovered on Saturday (Sources/ HT)

“The accused identified themselves as part of the Khekada (also spelt as Khekra) Gang, named after their home village in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district. They first targeted Delhi Metro about 10 years ago, stealing cables at midnight in areas without CCTV coverage. They used rented self-drive vehicles, like those in Gujarat, to execute their heists,” Diwansinh Vala of Gandhinagar’s Local Crime Branch said. The police also seized industrial cable cutters, mobile phones, and a Kia Carens vehicle from their possession.

Investigation started after a theft complaint from Gandhinagar’s old Koba metro station was registered on June 2, a day before the IPL cricket match finals at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. The thieves had made away with 700 metres of metro cable during the late night, an officer said.

“The theft had lead to an outage around 3 am, however the train services commenced at 7 am, the usual time,” a Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation official said.

With the help of the city’s Netram Project surveillance and technical analysis, investigators traced suspicious vehicles to a rented house in Ahmedabad’s Kalol, where four accused were found processing stolen cables. The gang had been stripping copper from metro cables to transport it to Delhi by train through an elaborate network.

The technical data shared by the Delhi police shows 95 undetected Delhi Metro cable thefts over the past two years, which could be linked to the Khekada Gang, Vala said, adding the accused will be facing charges under several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and Section 74 of the Metro Railways Act, 2002, with up to seven years’ imprisonment, a fine, or both.

This was the gang’s third theft in Gujarat within two weeks, following incidents on May 22 and June 5, Vala said. Around 500 metres of power cables worth ₹9 lakh was stolen from the tracks near Shahpur station on May 22, disrupting the metro services.

The arrested individuals --- Mushraf Irshad Mulejat (32), Rashid Ishaq Ismail Dhobi (21), Rashid Abdul Aziz Shabbir Ansari (45), and Irshad Majid Allameher Malik (33) --- are residents of Baghpat district in Uttar Pradesh.

Nine other gang members — key operative Raja Qureshi from Ghaziabad, who allegedly financed operations and acted as the primary receiver of stolen goods, according to police, and wanted accused Shahejad Amarudin Malik, Aamir Akbar Malik, Arif Babu Malik, Iklakh Ikbal Malik, Imran Malik, Arif Rafik, Sonu Babu Kasar, Arshad Asgar Malik, and Bilal Qureshi — remain at large.

The police said that the accused revealed their modus operand during the investigation. The gang would travel to cities with operational metro lines, rent accommodations near railway stations, hire vehicles through online platforms, and conduct detailed reconnaissance of metro routes before carrying out thefts during late-night hours.

“Their method involved identifying metro bridge pillars with adequate tree cover or wall support, using ropes and industrial cutters to access overhead cables. The stolen material would then be transported to pre-arranged safe houses where plastic coverings were removed and valuable copper separated for onward sale. In Gujarat, the total value of the goods they stole in three cases was around ₹29 lakhs,” the officer added.

“In Delhi alone, the gang confessed to 14 separate thefts, including 10 incidents at Majlis Park Jahangirpura metro station. In the case of Maharashtra, they admitted to 12 thefts in Pune and six in the Panvel-Navi Mumbai area. The group has also conducted operations in Madhya Pradesh,” the officer said, adding that many of their crimes had not yet been formally registered, indicating the true scale of metro cable theft may be significantly underreported across the country.