Visakhapatnam: The city police are worries about the illegal firearms manufactured in Bihar and other parts of the country as they have found their way to inter-state criminals and local criminal gangs, who are now targetting Vizag.
On Saturday, city police were shocked to find three country-made firearms, with dacoits from Bihar who were nabbed when they were chalking out plans to strike Vizag.
With the arrest of the 14-member dacoit gang, the cops have prevented the dacoity and seized three thapanchas with seven rounds of bullets, one knife, 120 gms gold, 1.2 kg silver, one car, one auto-rickshaw, two bikes and 3.5 kg dry ganja.
During the investigation, the gang confessed that they had committed three property offences including the Darapalem dacoity under Arilova Police station limits in Vizag in July 2017 and two more dacoities at MVP Colony and Anakapalle.
DCP (Crimes) Shemushi Bajpayee on Saturday said that the arrested have been identified as Mohammad Ali, Randheer Kumar, Reetham Kumar, Sujith Kumar and Bablu Kumar, who are all native of Bighar and were led by Tamri Bhagyaraj Kumar from Vizag. Mohammad Ali has been staying in Arilova in Vizag and befriended the local dacoity gang led by K. Suresh Kumar and Bhagyaraj Kumar.
Explaining the modus of operandi, ADCP (Crimes) V. Suresh Babu said that Ali and the local gang planned dacoity meticulously and conducted a recce of houses in city outskirts.
The gang forcefully barged into a house of government teacher K. Satyanarayana at Darapalem under Arilova police station limits in Vizag in July 2017 and threatened the inmates with guns and weapons and made away with 240 gm gold.
The same gang struck again and escaped with 360 gm gold and Rs 1 lakh cash after holding a 74-year-old woman M. Sarojini, hostage at MVP Colony in Vizag.
The police said that the gang selected the house of the rich where the inmates are less in number and commit the crime.
Based on concrete information on one of the accused, we have managed to nab 14 of the 17 members and an investigation is on to nab three others. The police booked the accused under various sections of the IPC and NDPS Act.
