Cuttack, June 8: The police today arrested six persons in connection with the robbery committed at the residence of retired Justice P.K. Mohanty in the CDA area.

Police commissioner R.P. Sharma said Rs 3.5 lakh in cash and two gold ingots weighing 230 grams, made by melting the gold ornaments, have been recovered so far.

The breakthrough in the sensational case came after police nabbed the mastermind Ramakant Parida, 42, of Kendrapara from Chandikhol.

Sharma said the gang had also decamped with cash and other gold ornaments and ATM cards from the house of Basant Moharana, a jeweller at Salepur, on May 22. The modus operandi in both the cases was similar.

Parida was nabbed on the basis of close circuit television camera footages and mobile calls that he made from inside an ATM kiosk at Bajrakabati Road in Cuttack. Sources said Parida had withdrawn Rs 41,000 from the ATM card of the jeweller on May 23 and had made eight to nine calls from the ATM counter itself.

Apart from Parida, the cops also arrested Manas Swain, 30, Deepak Sutar, 21, Pramod Samal, 27, Abdul Rehan, 24, and Ramesh Pradhan, 30. The gang had targeted Justice P.K. Mohanty's house in the wee hours of May 30. A supervisor of a construction site at Markatnagar had provided inputs to the gang regarding the probability of cash and ornaments at the retired judge's house.

Eight or nine men, along with a driver, had reached the crime spot in a Bolero and had gained entry into the house of Mohanty through a window on the ground floor.

After tying up Mohanty, his wife Sanjukta and daughter-in-law Shrada, the criminals looted around Rs 13 lakh in cash and other gold ornaments. The gang then escaped from the spot in the judge's car and subsequently abandoned the vehicle at Bhubaneswar. Later, they reached Chandikhol.

The gang had then subsequently contacted Ramesh Pradhan, a Puri-based jeweller, for disposing off the 293 grams gold ornaments.

Pradhan had contacted another Cuttack-based jeweller, who had prepared the two gold ingots by melting the ornaments. Efforts are on to nab others who extended their logistical help to the robbers.

The gang is involved in 17 cases of robbery and burglary in different parts of the state.

One motorcycle, an air gun, four ATM cards, two knives, seven mobile phones and two house breaking equipment have been recovered from them.