Four of gang held for 100 thefts during lockdown

GURUGRAM: The Sector 17 crime branch on Tuesday night arrested four members of a gang over their alleged involvement in at least 50 daytime burglaries in six residential areas across the city in the last three months, said the police.

The gang used to target only locked houses in areas such as sectors 56, 57, 53, 54, Sushant Lok-1 and Palam Vihar, said Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime). “The gang members had two various modus operandi. The first was to place a piece of paper on the door latch of the locked houses on the first day and check it the next day. If the paper was found missing, they used to target that house. In the second case, they used to ring the doorbell at least thrice, if no one answered within 10 minutes, they used to break the lock and ransack the house,” he said.

Police said more than 100 theft cases were reported in the month of June alone from across the city.

Sangwan said many families had left the city between March and April and returned in June. He said they received calls from these areas informing the police that their houses were targeted and electronic gadgets, cash and valuables are missing. In many cases, they had even picked up kitchen utensils and groceries.

According to Sector 30 crime branch incharge Narender Chauhan, the suspects have been identified as Hari Kishan alias Sonu, Golu alias Vimal, Dalip Kumar and Ranjeet Soni, who are from areas of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Acting on tip-offs, the crime team arrested them from Sangam

Vihar and Sainik Farms in Delhi. The gang is suspected to be involved in more than 100 cases of burglary in the city but police are working to identify more cases the suspects may have been involved in.

The police said the suspects are history-sheeters who served time in Bhondsi, Tihar, Faridabad and Uttar Pradesh jails at different occasions in the last five years.

Pankaj Kumar, a resident of Sector 56 who works in an IT firm in Sector 38, had reported that he had gone out of town with his family on April 2 and found their house ransacked when they returned on June 21. He alleged that cash, jewellery and electronic gadgets were stolen. “The entire house was topsy-turvy; the bed boxes were open, a cash locker fixed inside the almirah was missing. The television and computer were also taken away by the thieves. It seemed that they had spent enough time in the house as they had taken valuables from all rooms and took all utensils as well,” he said.

Police said after they formed teams and recovered CCTV footage from different areas and got leads on location where the suspects were seen scouting repeatedly.

They would usually steal items such as cash, jewellery and laptops, which are easier to carry in bags but due to lockdown, they picked up whatever they could even from the kitchen and the fridge, said the police, adding that they would spend more than two hours in a house or apartment without any fear.

Police said FIRs against them are registered under sections 380, 454 and 457 of the Indian Penal Code.