7 held for stealing electronic items from govt schools

The police arrested seven accused, for stealing computers at government schools of various districts, during the lockdown, and have recovered computers and other electronics items worth Rs 61 lakh from them.

The arrested are C Ravikumar of Nagamangala taluk, S R Manjunath, S P Nagaraju, C B Hemanthkumar of Mandya taluk, S Y Ramakrishna, B G Venkatesh of Bengaluru, and Sadiq of VV Puram, Mandya. They had allegedly misused the lockdown, to steal the computers.

Addressing media persons, Superintendent of Police K Parashuram said that the accused had stolen the computers from the government schools during lockdown and sold them to Ramakrishna and Venkatesh in Bengaluru. The batteries were sold to Sadiq. In all, 160 computers, 16 batteries, three television sets, one washing machine, one weighing machine, two UPS, three copier machines and one printer have been recovered. Two cars and one goods vehicle that were used for the crime have also been recovered, he said.

The accused had stolen the goods from Mandya, Mysuru, Ramanagar, Hassan, Tumakuru and Bengaluru districts. With their arrest, 34 theft cases have been busted. The computers stolen at various government schools are worth Rs 54 lakh. Another accused is at large, the SP said.

Parashuram also informed that two persons have been arrested in connection with the cheating case, in which women were lured by promising hefty interest for pledging their gold. Gold jewels weighing 2.1 kg is recovered.

A probe is being conducted on the complaints lodged by the victims. The case would be handed over to the CID for further probe, he added.