Goons arrested with recovered cash at the Airfield police station in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, Dec. 9: Police today arrested five youths, including an engineering student and two drivers of a builder, for robbing his kin at Pallaspalli on November 30 here.

Although the builder had initially claimed that two bike-borne persons had looted cash worth Rs 70 lakh from his kin at dagger point, today he changed his statement by declaring the amount to be Rs 36 lakh.

The police have recovered Rs 34.6 lakh in cash along with a kitchen knife and 46 chequebooks from the accused.

The accused include Prasant Jena, 24, a resident of Damana, Suman Barik, 22, a native of Bhadrak, Saroj Swain, 22, Sukanta Rout, 26, both from Sunderpada and Mohan Sahu, 22, of Jajpur.

The police said that both Sukanta and Mohan were working as drivers, while Saroj, a trader by profession, was the mastermind behind the crime.

Suman is a second-year engineering student at a city-based private tech college. Both Suman and Prasant were working as bouncers.

The police said that both Mohan and Sukanta, drivers of the builder identified as Ugrasen Sahu, had hatched the plan to loot the businessman after being lured by his monetary transactions.

The duo contacted their friend Saroj, who has a mobile recharge shop at Airfield area. Saroj planned the loot and roped in his childhood friend Suman, who included his friend Prasanta in the plan. The police said that all of them had planned for 15 days before committing the crime.

On the day of the crime, Mohan was driving the vehicle with the bag of cash and the builder’s kin accompanied him. Sukanta, the builder’s other driver, intercepted the vehicle.

“As soon as Sukanta’s vehicle overtook Mohan’s, the latter slowed down the car and both Suman and Prasant robbed the kin of the builder at knife point,” said a police official. Although the police had detained Mohan and the kin of the builder suspecting their role in the crime, further investigations gave a clean chit to the kin of the builder.

“All five accused had planned to distribute the money equally among themselves. After the loot, both Prasant and Suman had taken shelter at the house of the former’s friend in Banapur of Nayagarh district,” said police commissioner, R.P. Sharma.

The accused have also destroyed two mobile phones stolen from the kin of the businessman in a bid to wipe out evidence.