Calcutta, June 9 :
Calcutta, June 9:
A criminal of Behala and his girlfriend fell into the police net in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday. The couple, Chandan Das, 26, and Maya Swarnakar, 23, were picked up from a hideout on Bhupen Roy Road, in the Behala police station area.
The duo was produced in Alipore court on Saturday. Chandan was remanded in police custody, while Maya was sent to jail custody.
Chandan was wanted in a number of cases like murder, extortion and robbery, said Subhankar Chatterjee, deputy superintendent of police (town). 'About 18 cases have been registered against him at Behala police station alone. Of these, four are murder charges. Chandan had been arrested earlier in connection with the Oxytown murder case in which four persons of a family were hacked to death,' Chatterjee said.
Police did not have prior information about Maya and came to know about her while conducting the raid. Preliminary investigation revealed that she was a member of the gang headed by Chandan. Maya was involved in his brown sugar trade.
'Her arrest will help us find out if other girls were involved as well,' Chatterjee said.
Police had been on their trail for the past one month. Subir Chatterjee, officer-in-charge of Behala police station, said: 'We received a tip-off on Friday afternoon that Chandan had taken shelter in Behala. A plan was chalked out and accordingly, a team of 15 policemen was deployed at Bhupen Roy Road from the evening. Mobile vans sealed off all the major outlets and plainclothesmen, posing as hawkers, kept a close watch on the area. In the early morning, six policemen broke open the door and stormed the house.'
Chandan, a gangster, has been operating in the Behala, Thakurpukur and Amtala areas for the past few years, police said. He would extort protection money from realtors, who were constructing highrises in Thakupukur and Behala.
Police, however, claimed that with the arrest of Chandan, all the gangsters of this crime-prone area were now behind bars. 'Altogether 150 criminals - including criminals like Jishu Jain, Dabloo Singh, Mona Bhai, Ganesh Chhetri and their accomplices - have been arrested recently.'
According to police, the crime rate in the locality has dropped considerably with the arrests. While 23 persons were murdered in Thakurpukur in 1999, the number dropped to nine in 2000. There were only two murders this year. 'We are on the lookout for those miscreants who are still at large,' the DSP added.
Freedom-fighter dies: Santosh Kumar Chatterjee, a former Indian National Army officer posted in South-East Asia, died on June 7. He was 90. Chatterjee was founder member of Leather Exporters Manufacturers Association.