JOIN USFive men from Uttar Pradesh living as tenants in an adjoining house are suspected to have carried out the daring burglary at a jewellery store in Bommanahalli, south Bengaluru, on the intervening night of June 28 and 29.
The gang managed to take away 350 grams of jewellery from Pawan Jewellers located on Hongasandra Main Road. The burglary came to light when the shopkeeper, Vinod, opened the store on the morning of June 29. Vinod has been running the store for the past 20 years. The store shares a wall with a house owned by one Obesh.
DCP (Southeast) M B Boralingaiah said the gang members could be from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or Jharkhand. There are certain leads to establish the involvement of the gang. It may take sometime to crack the case, he added. On June 26, two men from Uttar Pradesh met Obesh seeking to rent his house. They introduced themselves as fruits sellers from Madiwala market and said they were presently put up in RT Nagar. They told him they wanted to move to a locality close to Madiwala market as RT Nagar was far away, police said.
Obesh agreed to rent the house and took Rs 25,000 as security deposit. Surprisingly, he didn’t collect any other details of the men except their phone numbers. Two days later, on June 28, three other men joined the duo. Obesh grew suspicious and asked the tenants about the three men. They told him they were their friends from Uttar Pradesh and would return the next day.
The men removed the windowpanes and came out of the house through the window on the night of June 28. They locked the house from outside and re-entered the house through the window.
They dug up a tunnel and entered the jewellery store. They tried to break open a cupboard using a gas cutter but in vain. They later collected the jewellery and fled from the house through the window. But before that, they damaged the CCTV cameras and took away the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) box that contained the CCTV footage.
Held for usury
A private moneylender from Nagasandra, north Bengaluru, has been arrested for charging borrowers high rates of interest. The suspect, Anand V, was lending to people without having the requisite licence. Police arrested him following complaints that he was exploiting and harassing his borrowers.