Mumbai: Over a month after six packages containing miscellaneous items were stolen from CSMT-bound Chennai Express, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) nabbed three of the five accused on Sunday and recovered notes of Rs 20 denomination amounting to around Rs 8 lakh.
A theft complaint was registered when the packages were found to be missing from the seat-cum-luggage rake (SLR) on arrival at Dadar station on July 14.
A Central Railway (CR) official said, “We began viewing CCTV camera footage of all stations where the train halted, right from Kalyan to CSMT.”
A camera at Sion recorded two men hanging along with the SLR compartment while the train was crossing the station. On being questioned, security guards from buildings near the station revealed that they had seen 5 men with packages.
The authorities still had no inkling of their identities. The investigation team then collected data of all cellphone numbers of past offenders involved in train thefts. “In the footage, we saw these men talking on their phones. So, we began checking cellphone locations and found around 35 phones active in that region at that specific time,” said an official involved with the investigation.
The RPF traced the location of one of the suspects, Ahmed Ali, who led them to Vijay Vithal Jadhav. Both were arrested in Mumbai. They had only two of the six stolen packages. The remaining four were smuggled out of the city and the RPF then began chasing a third accused, Shankar, alias Jumbo.
On learning of the arrest of two of his accomplices, Shankar, who is a suspect in around 50 other train theft cases, went into hiding after snapping all contact with his family and started using a different cellphone. He was tracked down and arrested on Monday. According to RPF officials, the five men hail from different parts of the country and had come together in Mumbai to carry out such thefts.
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