Inter-state racket busted, 6 persons arrested

Jajpur: With the arrest of six members of a gang in Jajpur district, police today claimed to have busted an inter-state racket which targetted trucks, especially in mining areas. The police also recovered one truck and many machinery parts of the stolen trucks from their possession, police said today.

The arrested gang members were identified as Sarbeswar Sahu alias Kalia (22), Susanta Kumar Behura alias Tilua (22), Satyajit Mohanty alias Sipua (23), Shaik Sabir (28), Brahmananda Sahu (42) and Ramesh Chandra Dixit (39).

It is suspected that the gang was involved in lifting over 24 trucks in the last nine months.

According to police, in Sukinda Chromite mining areas trucks wait in queue for days together to collect minerals.?In order to commit the crime these criminals go and check which truck has no driver or helper.

When the truckers go elsewhere after parking their vehicles in the queue for loading, the gang members steal these vehicles which are unmanned and drive them away avoiding detection by police or locals.

They take stolen trucks to scrap dealers who separate the machinery and iron parts from the vehicle. Then they sell the machinery and iron parts for Rs 1,00,000 to Rs 1,30,000 and wooden parts at the rate of Rs 20,000 to 30,000 of each truck in West Bengal and Jharkhand, Jajpur Superintendent of Police, Deepak Kumar said.

One truck, parts of machinery of many trucks, five mobile phones, four ATM cards and some cash were recovered from the gang, said the SP.

A team of officials had rushed to West Bengal and Jharkhand as search was on to apprehend other persons involved in the organised racket, police said.