Five high-profile thieves held in Gurgaon

Five members of a high-profile gang involved in over 100 thefts in posh areas of the National Capital Region (NCR) were arrested here, police said Friday.

The gang moved in expensive cars, used networking sites for communicating with associates and took help of online portal to sell stolen goods.

The Haryana Police Crime Branch of Sector 46, headed by Inspector Yashwant Singh, arrested three of the thieves Nov 12 and the other two Nov 14. All are in police remand and will be presented in court Saturday (Nov 16).

The thieves possessed a Sonata Gold car and a Maruti Zen. Other items recovered include 34 laptops, four LCD and LED TVs, two home theatres, ornaments and watches.

The arrested men have been identified as Manish alias Suraj, Alok Kumar, Sagar Sharma, Mangal (all 27) and Zameel Khan (32).

Gang leader Manish, who has a B.Com. degee, hails from Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh and was living in Noida in a rented accommodation.

Sagar and Mangal also resided in Noida while Zameel Khan and Alok Kumar are residents of Gurgaon.

Alok owns a shop, A-One Computers, in Gurgaon's Bhargav Palace market.

"The gang was involved in more that five dozen thefts in posh areas of Gurgaon, including DLF, Sushant Lok besides sectors 52, 56 and 40. They were also active in Karnal, Faridabad and Noida," Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Vivek Sharma said.

"They used to wear branded clothes to enter posh residential colonies in Sonata Gold and Zen cars during the day time. Manish is well versed in English and that helped them in entering the targeted area," Sharma said.

"They used social networking sites like Facebook rather than mobile phones to contact one another. They sold the stolen items through online portal OLX within hours of carrying out the theft," Sharma added.

The gang bought cars from the money earned from selling the stolen items.

Manish posed as a social worker and also presented himself as a would-be politician in Faridabad and Noida.

He was arrested for thefts in 2011, but thereafter changed his modus operandi of committing crime.

"We are grilling the accused. Two of their aides from Uttar Pradesh's Pratapgarh are yet to be arrested," said Yashwant Singh.

--Indo-Asian New Service

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