Chennai: The four accused arrested in the Salem - Chennai train heist case have been remanded in judicial custody on Monday, after 14 days in police custody.
After completion of police custody period, all the five accused identified as H. Mohar Singh, Rusi Pardi, S. Kaliya, P. Mahesh Pardi and N. Bittiya, were sent to the Central Prison, Puzhal, after getting remand order from the Hon'ble XI Metropolitan Magistrate Court, Saidapet, police sources said.
Mohar Singh, a native of Khejrachak village in Guna district of Madhya Pradesh, was a history-sheeter, investigations revealed. He and his cousins had committed several offences in the area and also in other states like Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra, police added.
This gang was also wanted for murders committed in Jammu and Kashmir in 2006, in which five members of a family were brutally murdered, and their property looted. Jammu and Kashmir police arrested all of them between 2007 and 2010.
After committing a few more murders, Mohar Singh and his gang moved to South India and committed many offences.
In Tamil Nadu, they stayed at various places like Villupuram,Tindivanam,Virudhachalam, Salem, Pondicherry and Arakkonam.
During his stay in Tamil Nadu, he came to know about the movement of cash on the Salem - Chennai train route through one of his gang members, police said.
As per plan they hatched, Mohar Singh and four other associates got on to the train in Chinnasalem, when it was about to move, taking advantage of the darkness where the engine and the parcel van halted in Chinnasalem railway station. There were no lights in that area of the station, and this benefitted them.
They went on to the roof top of the parcel van and cut the hole in the roof while the train was on the move between
Chennai-Salem and Vriddhachalam railway stations on the night of August 8, 2016. Two of the gang members entered the van through the hole, broke open the wooden boxes,took cash bundles and wrapped them in coloured dhotis. When the train was at the periphery of Vriddhachalam station, the ones on the roof top, gave the bundles to others already waiting there on the ground and fled, according to preliminary police enquiry findings.
Only in their later investigation, police came to understand that the accused had used a combination of a battery-operated cutter and manual cutter to cut the hole in the roof of parcel van carrying the Rs 5.78 crores in cash.
Mohar Singh has also confessed during interrogation that each of them had three lungis wrapped in their waists, as they had planned to loot as much as possible.
However, they could only take six cash bundles before reaching the fixed landmark, police said.
