A team of Railway Police Force (RPF) nabbed threeinter-State looters and recovered a whopping amount of Rs 2.23 crore from them on Friday.
The accused were identified as Ranjan Sribastav (58), a native of Ranchi and Sanjay Gupta (42) and Sunil Gupta (39), both native of Patna, Bihar. They were forwarded to SDJM Court at Jhrasuguda on Saturday.
Sources said their modus operandi was they followed passengers carrying valuables including cash from Howrah and committed the crime between Howrah and Jharsguda.
The Government Railway Police meanwhile is investigating the case as the looters are suspected to be involved in a number of passenger loot cases.
Sources said a case was registered with the Jharsuguda GRP on March 20, following transfer of one case from Howrah railway police. According to the details available in the FIR, one Gaurav Kumar, a businessman of Kolkata along with two of his employees had boarded a train No. 12906 from Howrah at about 10.50 pm on March 2 along with two big size trolley bags.
Kumar’s staffs had noticed at Jharsuguda that one of their bags was missing, which reportedly contained about Rs 3.14 lakh cash and some cloths."The accused and cash were handed over to us on Friday and after completion of formalities, they have been forwarded to court at Jharsuguda on Saturday, since the case has been registered there," said SP, GRP, Rourkela, Ajay Pratap Swain. "We are further investigating the case, as we suspect the arrested persons are part of a gang that has been involved in train passengers’ loot incidents," Swain added.