Thief brothers outsmart police recovery team

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, June 23

What could be termed as negligence or the bad luck of the Ludhiana police that a thief, who had committed a major theft in broad daylight at an industrialist’s house in Shakti Nagar three days ago, escaped from the custody of the Dugri police on Saturday afternoon.

What is good, however, the thief escaped after helping the police in the recovery of cash and gold ornaments worth several lakhs stolen from the house.

The accused, identified as Mani Kumar, a resident of Ambedkar Nagar, was nabbed by the Dugri police on Friday for Rs1.28-lakh theft.

Yesterday, Dugri SHO Ashok Kumar and his team conducted a press conference to declare the arrest of Mani and got their pictures clicked. The SHO said till Friday, he was not sure that Mani was also involved in a major theft reported at Shakti Nagar on June 18. He was arrested for Rs1.28-lakh theft only. During interrogation late Friday night, his (Mani’s) role behind the major theft at Shakti Nagar was revealed.

“Yesterday night, when we strictly questioned the accused, he confessed to having committed the broad daylight theft at the industrialist’s house, from where he stole 50 tolas of gold ornaments and Rs8 lakh in cash. The accused had told us that he had stashed the stolen cash and valuables at her brother Sunny’s house in Dhakka Colony. Today, we took the accused to the place for the recovery of stolen valuables. Luckily, we also recovered huge cash and gold from Sunny’s house,” said the SHO.

Today, a police party was taking Mani and Sunny to the police station. 

When they reached near the police station, Sunny complained of stomach ache and he grabbed the attention of the police party. Taking the benefit of the situation, Mani pushed a cop aside and escaped.

Notably, the industrialist’s house in Shakti Nagar falls under the jurisdiction of Model Town police.