Patna, Dec. 16: Schoolchildren might be despising the cold and foggy winter mornings in the state capital for the past few days but criminals are loving it.

Late last night, a gang of six armed criminals went on a three-hour loot spree, robbing four persons and burgling three shops in Gandhi Maidan and Kadamkuan police station areas.

Around midnight, six masked men sneaked into Timber Campus, a large complex housing shops, offices and residences on Daldali Road in the Gandhi Maidan area. Brandishing country-made pistols, they first targeted a truck driver, busy offloading goods from his vehicle. “They beat up the driver and snatched Rs 5,000 and a cellphone from him, while he was offloading marble slabs at a shop in the compound. The compound’s main gate is locked after sunset. The criminals must have scaled the rear boundary wall,” Sanjeev Kumar, the complex owner, told The Telegraph.

Thereafter, the gang attacked two employees of Shahbad Ply shop in the same complex and looted Rs 1,800 and a cellphone from one of them before locking them up in a small room, where they also held the truck driver captive. Two of the six gangsters stood guard and threatened the captives with dire consequences if they dared to raise an alarm.

“The criminals cut open the iron shutter of Raj Trading, a readymade garments shop near the compound’s main gate, after breaking three locks and ransacked it. Rs 15,500 was found missing from the locker. A police patrol, which remains stationed outside the compound gate, was missing last night,” Sanjeev said.

Sources said the same group was suspected to have struck at a rice mill, half-a-km away from the compound and under Kadamkuan police station area.

“The gangsters locked up three businessmen present at the rice mill. Then, they looted Rs 1,700 and three cellphones of Ravindra Kumar, one of the traders. They returned the SIM cards, though. The two others, Mahendra Singh and Ram Sevak, were robbed of Rs 1,500,” an officer at Kadamkuan police station said.