Brain behind serial burglaries nabbed

KOLKATA: Salt Lake police claimed to have arrested the brain behind the spate of burglaries that have been rocking the township for about two years. Amar Yadav, an unemployed but educated youth from Bihar, never carried out a burglary himself; he was reportedly the mastermind carefully staying behind the scenes, acting as mentor-cum-informer to various burglary rackets operating in the area.
Amar, who was nabbed with two other miscreants by officers of Bidhannagar North police station on Monday, took to crime after he failed to put his "decent education" to good use after his arrival in the city from Bihar's Katihar in 2006.On failing to get a job, he began maintaining regular liaison with miscreants in Kolkata who usually burgled homes at night.
Amar gradually spread his activities to the southern and northern fringes of Kolkata. He would draw up detailed plans for breaking into a targeted house and pass them on to gangs of burglars. The going was good for these gangs and none of whose members was ever caught as they followed Amar's tips to the hilt.
However, luck ran out in the last operation on Sunday, when Amar's men were caught in Salt Lake's Bonobitan while trying to snatch a bag from a Sector V employee who came out of a private bank with a hefty sum in it. The arrested men Shakti and Gautam Yadav spilled the beans on their mentor to cops. A day later, he was arrested from a hotel in central Kolkata.
"Shakti and Gautam told us that Amar was their key mentor. In return, he would take a sizeable percentage of the loot after each operation. Amar was from Bihar and members of gangs that were tipped off by him also hailed from that terrain," a Salt Lake police officer said.
The fact that Amar always stayed behind the scenes helped him evade the police dragnet for so long, a senior officer said. In fact, cops were unaware of his activities as he was not a member of any organized gang. Instead, he would gather information on localities where his potential targets lived. He passed on tips to burglars.
A few months ago, a man who used a fishing rod to steal valuables from Salt Lake houses was nabbed in the township. A resident of Basirhat, he made it a point to reach Salt Lake early every morning. After spending
the morning doing the recce for a crime, he would strike in the afternoon by inserting his fishing rod through open windows on the ground floor. He had acquired a skill of stealthily pulling valuables towards him before fleeing.
When police finally zeroed in on Amar, they found laptops, valuable watches and mobile phones in his possession.
While police were tipped off about the criminal with the fishing rod from eyewitnesses, there was none to witness Amar's undercover modus operandi. He simply provided burglars with the route map to barge into a house he targeted for them without ever accompanying any of them during their operations.