Temple desecration, theft case: 60 men worked for 72 hours without sleep to crack case

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, August 22

It was kind a temple run for the Khanna police as to chase down the suspects who committed theft and desecration at the Shivpuri temple in Khanna, the police personnel kept running in different states, including Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, for the past three days without sleep or proper rest. Since the case was sensitive, they did not want to give any chance to the religious community for agitation, hence, worked day and night and tasted success.

DIG, Ludhiana Range, Dhanpreet Kaur, was directly supervising the investigation.

Talking to The Tribune here on Tuesday about challenges the police faced in cracking the case, SSP, Khanna, Ashwini Gotyal, said the police worked on various theories and angles to reach out to the suspects.

In the initial probe, the police were confirmed that the suspects were professional thieves and not drug addicts or inexperienced as thieves first broke the window installed at 25-ft height and tied a rope with window and climbed down the sanctum santorum where Shivling and other idols are installed. After the theft, the suspects, Ravi and Mohit, again climbed up through the rope and fled the scene. The third suspect, Resham, was keeping a tab around the temple while their fourth accomplice, Honey, was present at the bus stand. It was a well-planned theft. Rajeev, a jeweller, was also booked in the case.

The SSP said while climbing down, Ravi suffered injury and his blood drops fell on the floor which were collected from the temple by the forensic team and the DNA test of blood samples would easily confirm the identity of the suspect. Even fingerprints of the two suspects found in the window and inside the temple were matched, which confirmed their role.

“We questioned and physically verified over 100 persons at the initial stage of investigation, including workers engaged at some work in the temple, new tenants staying in the area, people who did lighting work at the temple or those who started new works near the temple,” Gotyal said.

On Monday after the police got CCTV images of the suspects, the real challenge started for the police, SSP Gotyal said, adding that “Since Monday, our 60 men continuously worked for 72 hours shunning their sleep and visited prisons in the state to get any clue by showing the images to inmates, checked hundreds of CCTV cameras, met police officials of different states to match images of the suspects involved in theft cases at temples or religious places reported in the past”.

The SSP said the police got a major lead when in temple theft cases reported at Chandigarh in 2018 and Lucknow in 2020, they got the image of a suspect in that cases, resembling one of the suspects in the case, Resham Singh. Afterwards, the police leads continued to pour in and the suspects were arrested, she said.

With the arrest of four suspects, except Mohit, a temple theft committed in Bengaluru by the gang in 2024, which was lying unsolved, has also been cracked now.

Were planning to target temples in southern states

Interestingly, the suspects would look for religious places on Google and fix their targets. After the Khanna temple incident, the gang had planned to commit thefts in temples at Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Gang members Ravi and Mohit had to board a train for Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, from Delhi on Wednesday night at 9 pm as they had chosen a temple to commit theft but the police foiled their plan. Resham was not accompanying them as he had a court hearing pertaining to a temple theft case he was facing.

Temples favourite target

Though the gang has also targeted other religious places such as a gurdwara in Delhi, temples were their favourite ones as their main aim was to steal silver ornaments only. The gang’s kingpin, Resham, had 10 cases of thefts at religious places, mostly temples, registered against him, Mohit also has five theft cases against him while Rajeev is facing cases registered in UP. Honey has no criminal past.