BTech student, son of senior executive, burgled houses

GHAZIABAD: The lure of leading a lavish life has prompted a four-member gang that includes a 21-year-old BTech student to commit a series of burglaries in the national capital region in the past few months. The gang members even splurged the looted money on new cars.
Their luck, however, ran out soon as they were caught in CCTV cameras while conducting a robbery in Sector 5, Vaishali, on July 27.They were arrested on Friday and jewellery worth Rs 10 lakh, two cars and a bike were seized from them.
According to police, their latest robbery was in the house of the sister of a BJP leader in Sector 5, Vaishali, on July 27. The entire robbery was caught in CCTV cameras installed in the locality in which two thieves could be seen leaving the house with a bag.
The arrested BTech student Apoorva Sharma’s father is a senior official in an automobile company in Noida. The other three have been identified as Kshitiz, Suraj and Sahil, all residents of Delhi.
Their fifth accomplice, Akash, is on the run. Police said Sharma had conducted a recce of the house in Sector 5 a few days earlier. The gang members later bought new cars using the cash and jewellery stolen from the house.
“The gang’s modus operandi is to first conduct a recce of the area where they plan to conduct the robbery. They would also steal the digital video recorder which captures the CCTV footage so that police could not identify them,” said SSP Vaibhav Krishna. However, this time, it was the video footage that helped the police in nabbing the culprits.
The sister of BJP leader, Anju Gupta (45), who works in PNB Metlife as a unit manager, said just like any other day, she and her husband had locked the house and left for their respective work places on July 27. However, when she returned home in the evening, she found the locks of the main door broken and the entire house ransacked. A closer scrutiny revealed that Rs 2.5 lakh cash and jewellery worth Rs 8 lakh were missing from the cupboards.
Her husband Ashwani Gupta (52), who runs a medical shop in the GDA market in the same locality, said, “Following the robbery, when we checked the footage of the CCTV cameras installed in the vicinity, we found two persons entering the house around 1pm and then coming out an hour later. While coming out from the house, one of them could be seen carrying a blue colour bag on his shoulders. They were not in a hurry while exiting the house.”
An FIR was subsequently registered under sections 454 (house breaking for theft) and 380 (theft in dwelling house) pertaining to theft.