Malda, Jan. 25: Following fresh confessions made by the two car thieves arrested on January 19, Englishbazar police have recovered a Maruti Zen abandoned in a deserted area on the outskirts of the town.
The two youths from Delhi, Sunil Kumar Yadav and Manoj Kumar Rathi, were arrested from a tourist lodge after the staff, suspicious of their movements, informed the police. The duo was waiting to broker a deal for a black Scorpio stolen from Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi. They had driven all the way to Malda in the two-month-old car and had fixed the sale price at Rs 3 lakh.
Malda superintendent of police Sashikant Pujari said they came to know about the “other car” after their counterparts at Gurgaon city police station informed them that two vehicles were stolen from their area on January 15.
“One was the Scorpio that we seized from the car thieves and the other was a Maruti Zen. Immediately after knowing the details, we began a fresh round of interrogation and before long, they broke down and told us where they had hidden the vehicle,” Pujari said. “Both the automobiles have been kept at Englishbazar police station. The owners of the cars have been contacted and asked to take possession at the earliest.”
The case has been transferred to Gurgaon city police station and a team had visited Malda to probe the incident of robbery and interrogate Yadav and Rathi.
Contrary to conclusions drawn after preliminary investigations, the police now believe the duo is associated with a organised cartel that has stolen over 1,000 cars from Delhi and Haryana and sold them to clients in Bihar, north Bengal and Nepal.
“The ganglord’s name is Darshan Ram. He lives in Delhi. A team of the Delhi police will arrive in a couple of days to initiate a fresh probe,” Pujari said.
The police superintendent said they did not have the infrastructure to crack down on the criminals but added that they were working towards finding a solution to overcome the problem.
“We have come to know the names of other persons involved in the racket from the statements extracted from the duo. We have forwarded the names to all the police stations concerned,” Pujari said.