Government Railway Police(GRP) personnel today claimed to have busted two gangs of robbers who had looted passengers on inter-state railway trains, police sources said here today.
Five members of a Bihar gang as well as two members of a Haryana gang were arrested and over 780 gm of gold ornaments valued at Rs 21.5 lakh were seized from them, police sources said.
The five members of the six-member Bihar gang have been identified as Abhishek Nishad (24), Deepak Mandal (30), Bamabam Kumar (28), Vishal Kumar (20) and Bugga Kumar. All of them belong to Bihar while a sixth gang member is still at large, police sources said, adding that a manhunt is on to nab him.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (GRP) P Narayana Rao and Inspector G Koteswara Rao told reporters that the Bihar gang was involved in three offences on the Kakinada-Visakhapatnam passenger train on February 14, February 15 and February 18. The entire stolen gold of about 183 gms, valued around Rs 5 lakh was seized from them, he said.
Allegedly, the gang would board the passenger train and occupy luggage racks. Two of them would engage passengers in conversation while the others would use a master key to open the luggage of passengers and make good with gold ornaments.
GRP personnel said that two members of the six-member Haryana gang who were arrested were identified as Rajendar alias Ajay (36) and Hans Raj (25) while leaders of the gang including Rajendar, Surendar Mahendar and Jagadeesh are still at large.
Allegedly, the six-member-gang was involved in 12 cases in the past few months in which they looted passengers of different trains between Vijayawada and Vizag.
The gang stole about 1 kg of gold ornaments and the GRP has recovered about 600 gms, worth about Rs 16.5 lakh.
The Haryana gang would board air-conditioned compartments of long distance trains such as Vizag-Delhi, Vizag-Mumbai and others with valid tickets. When the trains stopped at stations in the night, they took away the luggage of passengers when they were asleep.
Two members of the gang were arrested at Vizag railway station after they got down from Delhi-Vizag Dakshin Express train and tried to escape through an exit point of the station on Saturday, GRP sources said.
