Theft gang busted in Thane; 8 held

With the arrest of eight persons, Thane Police claimed to have busted a gang allegedly involved in thefts by cooking up stories of robbery.
The police got the first lead into the case by apprehending a truck driver and its cleaner last week when they tried to mislead the cops by saying that their steel-laden vehicle was robbed on highway in Thane, DCP-Zone I Sachin Patil told reporters here last night.
He said that on January 1, a truck carrying steel pipes weighing about 5.50 tonnes valued at around Rs 13.34 lakhs was dispatched from a godown of a company at Bhiwandi in Thane for Kalamboli in Navi Mumbai.

However, the truck did not reach the destination.
Instead, the next day, truck driver Ramdayal Chowdhari and cleaner Mohammad Rafique lodged a complaint of robbery with Shil-Daighar police station.
They informed the police that there was a highway robbery wherein some miscreants waylaid the truck, pulled out both of them, tied them up and then fled with the truck containing the steel pipes, the police official said.

The probe team, lead by senior police inspector Krishna Katkar, sensing something amiss took Chowdhari and Rafique into custody. During interrogation, they revealed that infact they had "cooked" up the story of robbery and that the truck was never waylaid and looted, he said.

It was ascertained that the duo had taken the truck to a godown at Kalamboli and unloaded the consignment there to be shifted elsewhere and disposed, police said.
Subsequently, the police arrested the duo and six of their other gang members on Friday, who were allegedly involved in an inter-state robbery racket, and recovered the full stock from the godown at Kalamboli, police said.
Among those arrested, are the gang leader Mustaq Abdul Khan and godown owner Kewaram Patel, police added.