Salt Lake dacoity: Police nab six, including mastermind

Within five days of the incident, police arrested six persons including the mastermind, a cook of the adjacent residence, on Wednesday in connection with the dacoity in the house of a businessman at CE block in Salt Lake.

It may be mentioned that the miscreants had fled with Rs 60,000 cash, jewellery and mobile phones from the house of Amarnath Chakraborty on July 8 evening. Santosh Pandey, Deputy Commissioner of Zone-I of Bidhannagar Commissionerate, said the mastermind Sitaram Das (30) used to work in the adjacent residence as a cook and he often used to visit the house of Chakraborty at CE-160. He had chalked out the plan of committing dacoity in the house and had engaged the other youth.

“It was their second attempt. Their first attempt was a few days ahead of July 9. They had gathered on that day outside the house, but they couldn’t execute the plan apprehending getting caught as there were many other people in the house,” Pandey said adding that they had scaled the wall to enter the premises of the house and finally barged inside the house in the absence of Chakraborty.

Apart from Sitaram, the arrested persons include Pappu Yadav (22) alias Pardesi, Manoj Das (18) alias Congressi and Rajesh Yadav (24), Raja Halder (34) and Tapan Purkait (28). Apart from Raja and Tapan, all others were originally residents of Banka in Bihar. Raja and Tapan were residents of Jharkhali and Kultali respectively. The accused from Bihar came in touch with Raja and Tapan as they used to stay in a rented house at Kestopur, from where they were arrested. Police have recovered the machetes and the toy guns that the accused had used to commit the crime. Four of them were remanded in police custody, while the other two were remanded in judicial custody after being produced before the court on Wednesday afternoon.

Police came to know that three of the six arrested persons including Sitaram used to work as helps in the different households in Salt Lake area while other three are auto-rickshaw drivers.

Chakraborty’s daughters Namrata and Rinita, who were traumatised as the dacoits held a machete to their throats, threatening them with dire consequences to get valuables in the house, were shell shocked knowing that Sitaram was the mastermind behind the crime.

Recollecting the time when Sitaram had visited their house, Namrata said: “He used to interact with us quite often but never let us understand that he had such a plan at the back of his mind. He even used to come to our house if he had cooked anything special.”

Rinita said they were quite confident that there was someone very close to them and who knew well aware about the movement of the family members was involved in the crime. “On the day of the incident, it seems the person, who was standing on the staircase and giving directions to other dacoits, was no one else’s than Sitaram,” she said adding that they didn’t understand that they were carrying toy pistols.