Think twice before you go outside leaving your home locked, secure in the thought that it is safe with cops doing the nocturnal round of patrolling, for the burglars are prowling around to unlock and barge their way into the house to rob everything you have there.
Four burglars have recently been arrested and during interrogation, they revealed that they used to conduct recce of the locked houses during the day hours and burgle them midnight, a revelation that is likely to scare the residents of the city.
Police ascribed the recent spurt in burglaries to shortage of personnel to deal with crimes in the city with a large number of them being engaged in providing security to Ardh Kumbh. “The staff crunch is affecting night patrolling,” a senior cop said.
Sounding depressed, he further said that two former SSPs of Dehradun had set up anti-theft cells, asking the people to inform the police on the given number before they went outside for some days. “But the anti-theft cells were closed after it was found that the people were not informing them through the number given by the cell,” he added.
Things have become all the more scary after it was learnt that Krishan Pal, a former Gram Pradhan of Muzaffarnagar (Uttar Pradesh) and a gang leader of an infamous inter-state group adept in burglary, had Dehradun under his radar. The gang under him had committed crimes in a host of States like Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. He was arrested by Dehradun police on Thursday.
Tipped that a gang was about to reach Vasant Vihar, Patelnagar and Premnagar areas of Dehradun to commit crimes, a police team led by Premnagar sub-inspector Yashpal Singh Bisht started vehicle checking drive in the area.
Police directed a vehicle with UP plate to stop for checking at Gorakhpur Chowk, Premangar. But the driver tried to escape. At check point, police personnel arrested the trio, including Krishan Pal. The accused, admitting their crimes, said that they had burgled several houses in Dehradun in the recent past.
In the course of interrogation, the accused said they used to conduct recce of closed houses by car for three consecutive days. On the fourth day, they used to burgle the closed house and decamped with money and jewellery when it was mid night. After committing burglary, they used to leave Dehradun in the early morning hours.
Dehradun police have arrested two others among Pal’s accomplices and recovered a stolen car and jewellery worth around Rs 2.5 lakhs from their possession, said SP City Ajay Singh. He said that the accused, native of Muzaffarnagar (Uttar Pradesh), had beeb the pradhan for five years from 2005 while the other two gang members are Pawan alias lakhmi and Bablu, both natives of Muzaffarnagar.
Dehradun police arrested another burglar and recovered stolen jewellery worth around `5 lakh from his possession on Friday. The accused has been identified as Amit Singh, resident of New Cantt under Kotwali police station. In course of interrogation, the accused admitted his offence, saying that he had burgled a closed home in New Cantt on January 16. The accused further said that he used to conduct recce during the day and burgle the house mid-night.
In another incident, a locked shop was burgled at Dhamawala in the city. SP City Singh said that one Saheb Shinde, resident of Dhamawala, registered a complaint on Friday evening on the matter. In his written complaint, he stated that his closed shop at Dhamawala was burgled by unidentified persons on Thursday night.