Haridevpur thefts: Cops make major breakthrough

Kolkata: Haridevpur police station on Wednesday claimed to have made a major breakthrough in the case of a series of thefts at a number of households in the area in March. Two persons were nabbed in this connection and stolen articles to the tune of Rs 3.5 lakh have been recovered.

An Investigating Officer said that there were complaints of 18 incidents of theft lodged with the police station in the month of March on the basis of which a special team was formed to conduct the probe.

"The modus operandi was found to be more or less similar as in all these cases the articles were stolen at the time when there was no one in the household. This gave us the impression that a single gang may be involved in these thefts," the officer said.

In the beginning, the sleuths had little clue as the duo kept on changing locations but an IMEI number of a stolen mobile phone provided the lead.

They had ordered a pizza from that cell phone which was tracked by the sleuths. One of the cops posed as the pizza delivery boy and located the address and accordingly, a team rushed there and managed to nab them.

The duo has been identified as Deep Kumar Halder, alias Andhakar, and Wasim Adhikari.

Gold and silver jewellery, mobile phones, cycles, a camera and cash worth more than Rs 3.5 lakh have been seized from their possession. "We are grilling them to find out if any other person is involved," a police officer said.