By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 13 Nov: Dehradun Police claim to have made an important breakthrough in the case of robbery of a jewellery showroom in Dehradun that took place on 9 November. The Police have been scanning the video footage collected from CCTV camaras installed in the city and have also been matching the footage received from other states where such robberies had been committed in the recent past.
A new piece of information is that the Ertiga Car (Maruti Suzuki) allegedly used by the robbers in the robbery in Dehradun on 9 November had actually been stolen in June from the Agra Expressway. SSP Ajai Singh has sent a police team to Agra for further investigation.
It may be recalled that the Ertiga Car allegedly used by the robbers was abandoned by them after the robbery in Selaqui, on the night of 9 November, probably after finding that a heavy search operation and barricading operation had been launched by the Doon Police. As per the information available, the car had been stolen in the month of June after taking the driver hostage in Kandoli police station area of Agra. In this regard, a case of robbery was registered in Agra on 10 June, 2023.
Meanwhile the Police seemed to have found matching profiles from the robbery footage from Latur in Maharashtra and Katni in MP. It may be recalled that SSP Singh had chaired a high level meeting of all the gazetted police officers of Dehradun Police on Saturday to discuss the way forward in the investigation. The officers were handed over tasks in this regard. It was also discussed that, as per the investigation done so far, five persons had stayed in Haridwar in a local hotel about three to four days before the robbery. The IDs given by them to the hotel for stay in Haridwar have turned out to be fake. In Katni of Madhya Pradesh, a similar robbery at the local Reliance Jewellery showroom had been committed on 5 April, this year, and later on 13 August in Latur, Maharashtra. As per a lead available on these two robbery cases, one accused, alleged to be the gang leader, Subodh had been arrested in Patna by Maharashtra Police and he is presently lodged in Patna jail. Dehradun Police is trying to reach out to Maharashtra Police for possible further leads in the case.
As per the police, the faces of the absconding suspects, footage of which has been gathered by Doon Police, seem to be matching those of the Katni and Latur suspects. Separate teams have been constituted and sent to the places concerned for further investigation.
This gang comprising mostly criminals from Bihar has a wide network reaching up to West Bengal and Nepal. The police appear to be convinced that the robbery on Rajpur Road had been carried out after months of planning and a series of recces done by the criminals before carrying out actual robbery in which jewellery worth more Rs 20 crores is estimated to have been looted.
