Two smuggling gangs busted in Nagpur

This Nagpur city police have in two separate incidents busted interstate gangs involved in smuggling of sophisticated firearms and selling genuine Reliance Infocomm-branded mobile handsets at cut-rate prices.

In the first instance, the police nabbed Jaijeet Ajaybehari Dixit, a 21-year old from Madhya Pradesh, and recovered two pistols, each costing about Rs 2.5 lakh, which he was offering for a mere Rs 50,000 each.

A team comprising eight policemen was sent to Bhind in search of other gang members, Dharmendra Barodiya and Chhotu Yadav. Another team is expected to leave shortly for nabbing other accomplices of the main accused.

Speaking to the press, Yashasvi Yadav, deputy commissioner of police (zone II), said the persons who had shown interest in purchasing the pistols will also be booked.

The police suspects the gang to have sold 30 such pistols to persons in Maharashtra and other states. An offence under Section 3/25 of the Arms Act has been registered against Jaijeet.

In a second incident, police arrested nine racketeers, including a former recovery agent of Reliance India Mobile and an employee of Airtel, for illegally selling Reliance Infocomm's mobile phones for Rs 2000-3000 a piece.

Police said the accused had submitted bogus documents and cheques towards the bills to the company. Seven mobile phones, which they had sold to others, were also seized from them.

The accused were identified as former recovery agent of Reliance India Mobile, Shailendra Singh Karan Singh Sohal, Airtel employee, Mohammad Ashad Irshad Khan, Ashish Sureshrao Patil, Siddharth Gunwant Meshram, Pranay Dattaraj Narnawre, Vinay Laxman Shukla, Swapnil Balabhau Wakeel, Dhiraj Satyanarayan Mishra and Shashank Manik Sakhare.

Yadav said Reliance had launched a scheme some eight months ago and had given an offer of a mobile phone for Rs 500. The accused procured the mobile phones by submitting bogus documents and sold them to others at higher rates.

As they had submitted fake documents, the company sent the bills to the persons whose addresses were mentioned in the official record though they were not using the facility.

Because it was a new scheme, initially there was some delay in despatching bills by the company. Later, when the billing work started, the accused started depositing bogus cheques.

On May 10, Reliance collection manager Virendra Shivpujan Shukla had a doubt when three persons came to the company's office to deposit the bills. He made them sit in the office itself and immediately informed police.

After an inquiry, Sadar Police under the supervision of ACP Ajinkya Bobde and PI Arun Tembhre, PSI R R Kapgate and his team arrested all the nine racketeers and registered an offence against them under Sections 420, 468, 471, 34 of the IPC.