Five held with gold boat weighing 1.5 kg
A BOAT OF YELLOW METAL, SUPPOSEDLY GOLD, WAS FOUND IN THE CAR FOR WHICH THE PEOPLE IN THE CAR FAILED TO PRODUCE ANY DOCUMENTS.
PRAYAGRAJ: The Puramufti police arrested five people, including a jeweller with a gold boat weighing 1.5 kilograms. The accused claimed that they purchased it from Assam. Income tax and sales tax officials have been informed about the recovery and it is being investigated if the boat is made of pure gold or mixed with some other metal.
SP city Dinesh Kumar Singh said Puramufti police intercepted a car with five people during routine checking drive late Saturday night.
A boat of yellow metal, supposedly gold, was found in the car for which the people in the car failed to produce any documents. They were arrested and identified as Suraj Verma, Ramdhan Sahu, Dhirendra Pal, Tilak Singh and Vimlesh Pal.
On being questioned further, Suraj Verma said he was in contact with a person from Assam who showed him the boat made of gold through video call. Suraj and four of his aides then went to Assam in their car and were returning after purchasing the gold boat which is in two parts. Primary investigations suggest that the jeweller brought the gold concealed in the car to evade tax.
However, the purity of the gold is still to be examined. Further action would be taken after receiving report from income tax and sales tax officials, he added.
Five vehicle lifters held with six SUVs
In a major breakthrough, SOG narcotics team, under In charge Mahaveer Singh, along SOG officials Amit Rai and Manoj Singh arrested five more members of an International vehicle lifters gang and recovered six SUVs, including a Fortuner car stolen from different parts of the country.
SP (crime) Ashutosh Mishra said those arrested were identified as Ramu aka Rajkumar, Mohd Saad, Prem Kumar Kushwaha, Mohd Mainuddin and Sunit Kunal, all residents of Siwan district of Bihar.
All arrested people were part of the gang busted by police around two weeks back. The kingpin of the gang used to run a hotel in Lucknow.
The arrested people used to purchase documents of scrap vehicles and used their chassis, engine and registration numbers on new vehicles stolen from different parts of the country.
The stolen vehicles were sold to people not only in Uttar Pradesh but in Bihar, West Bengal, Maharashtra, , Himachal Pradesh and even in southern states.
An RTO officer in Bihar who used to help the gang members in forging documents of vehicles was recently arrested by Bihar police and is lodged in jail.
An FIR had been lodged against them at Cantonment police station and they were being questioned further, the SP added.