Duo were making off with Rs 7-lakh booty, but Kurla GRP -- on its toes since Bodh Gaya incident -- noticed their shifty behaviour while they were trying to board a train to Bihar
The Government Railway Police (GRP) at Kurla yesterday stopped a heist dead in its tracks. While carrying out a check of the passengers’ luggage at the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT), they spotted two people trying to evade the frisking.
Prize catch: The two accused, a domestic help and his brother, nabbed by the Kurla GRP with Rs 7 lakh stolen booty
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When the police questioned them, it did not take them long to reveal that they were escaping to Bihar after one of them, a manservant at a Napean Sea Road apartment, had broken into his employer’s house.
The accused incidentally scaled the 30-storey building where his employer resides, all the way up to the sixteenth floor, by clambering up drainage pipes and bamboo scaffoldings bracing the high rise, which is under repairs.
“We were carrying out a check at LTT on Wednesday around 11.30 am, as the Pawan Express was about to depart for Darbhanga a little after noon from the station. We learned that two people had abruptly left the queue and started running, raising our suspicion,” said Shivaji Dhumal, senior inspector, Kurla GRP.
After the blasts in Bodh Gaya, and the subsequent terror alerts from the Intelligence Bureau – not to mention the anniversaries of 13/7 and 11/7 bomb blasts in the city - the police have tightened security checks at railway stations and other vulnerable spots.
Before the two could slip away, the police caught up with them and went through their baggage. Their suspicion proved to be valid. The contents of bag consisted of cash worth Rs 5,93,135, silver biscuits weighing 1,275 grams valued at around Rs 55,000, three expensive watches worth Rs 1,07,000 and a DVD player costing Rs 10,000.
“When we questioned the two, they broke down and told us the truth,” aid SI Dhumal. “The two, identified as Lalit Kumar Baitha, 19, and Sudhir Kumar Baitha, 31, are brothers from Muzzaffarpur, Bihar. Lalit Kumar worked as a domestic help at the house of L B Shah, an oil exporter who resides in a 30-storey tower in Napean Sea Road,” he said.
“Shah had gone to Ahmedabad with his family and asked all the workers in his house to come back when he returned. On Tuesday evening, while Shah was still away, Lalit Kumar went to the building and when nobody was around, climbed up the bamboos and drain pipes till the 16th floor, broke the glass of the sliding window and entered Shah’s house.
After clearing out the apartment of the cash and valuables, he came down and called his brother. They were about to leave for Muzzaffarpur from LTT, when we caught them at the station,” the cop said.
Cops have booked the duo for burglary. They were trying to contact the owner of the house at the time of going to press. u00a0
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