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Gurgaon police solves Manappuram gold heist case, recovers 30 kg gold
In a major breakthrough, the Gurgaon police on Saturday managed to arrest four accused involved in the daring daylight heist at Mannapuram Finance Ltd in Gurgaon
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In a major breakthrough, the Gurgaon police on Saturday managed to arrest four accused involved in the daring daylight heist at Mannapuram Finance Ltd in Gurgaon with 48 hours of the incident.
The police also recovered 30 kg of gold and some cash looted from the New Railway road branch on Thursday.
A group of seven to eight men had carried out the robbery and decamped with gold valued at Rs 10 crore and Rs 8 lakh in cash from the branch.
A case was registered at Civil Lines police station under arms act and robbery.
Interestingly, the eight-member gang had carried out a recce of the Laxman vihar branch of Mannapuram Finance around January 26 but later decided to strike at the New Railway road branch, said an official.
Four members of the gang have been identified to be from Kanpur, whereas 2 are from Jind, one from Farrukh Nagar in Gurgaon.
Police is not ruling out the possibility of other conspirators, and involvement of receivers of stolen gold. Around 2.5 kg gold out of the robbed 32.5 Kg is missing, and police is hopeful that it would be recovered from the absconders.
Police is also questioning the girl friend of one of the accused, who provided crucial inputs in nabbing them. While the group of three were picked from a guest house of u-block in DLF phase 3, one was arrested from Ahmedabad, who is being brought back by a police team.
Police said that all the accused have been identified, and the four absconding members of the gang would be arrested soon. “The accused were in the process of dividing the looted gold and sell it to receivers. The best part is that gold has been recovered in 829 sealed packets which can be identified easily and returned to owners”, said a visibly relieved Sandep Khirwar, Gurgaon police commissioner.
The four were identified as Hoshiyar Singh son of Lakhi Ram, resident of Farrukh Nagar, Vikas Gupta son of Anup Gupta, resident of Kanpur, and Bijendra alias Chabila son of Dilbagh Singh resident of Jind. The fourth accused Devender also hails from Jind and he had flown to Ahmedabad to dispose the stolen gold. He was staying in Lemont Tree hotel from where he was arrested.
Police officials admitted that inability of the robbers to decamp with the DVR recorder proved to be their major undoing as police was able to identify them using CCTV grabs. Some of the accused also have past criminal records, and the superimposition of their pictures in police data, and analysis of call records of their female friends also helped the investigation team in identifying them.
Sumit Kuhar, DCP, Crime said that CCTV grabs of the accused helped them in generating great amount of information of the accused. “We used social media feeds, activated the informers and also get leads from analsysis of data to catch hold of the culprits. The photos of the accused helped in getting valuable information”, he said.
Police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar appreciated the hard work put in by crime branch team for cracking the case.
