Ghaziabad: Mansi Bhatt, a 21-year-old student of Delhi University, was arrested by Ghaziabad police for allegedly leading a gang of burglars, police said. Mansi turned out to be the leader of a gang of burglars operating across five states.
Her arrest, along with six others, has led to the recovery of gold and diamond jewellery worth Rs 2 crore.
The gang members were returning from Mumbai, unaware that their use of a stolen mobile had made it easy for the cops to track them. They were intercepted at the UP border on Thursday night.
Mansi is a BCom student and has been working part-time as a travel agent in the Kalindi Kunj area of southeast Delhi. But, under the cover of this job, she headed a sophisticated operation for carrying out burglaries in other states.
Originally from the Pauri district of Uttarakhand, the girl is a close friend of one of the accused, Vikram, whose father is a manager in a textile mill. Her father, a senior government official in Uttarakhand, had passed away sometime back and she was staying with her mother in the Indirapuram area. She joined the gang about a year ago and soon assumed command.
The other accused - Ramesh, Satyendra, Chand, Mukesh and Amit - too are from middle class families with their fathers working in UP Roadways and Indian Railways.
According to SSP (Ghaziabad), Raghubir Lal, the gang had an elaborate modus operandi. It would either drive or fly to a city and check into a good hotel. This would help in avoiding any suspicion. Mansi would, according to the cops, survey the target area, posing as a courier girl. She would chat up the unsuspecting security guards from whom she got most of her information.
Once the operation to break into houses of businessmen and professionals in multi-storeyed apartments that were locked was planned, the men would dress up as courier boys, break into the house and emerge with the booty in very little time.
"They would then carry the loot to the hotel. Mansi would then take it to the capital by air and split it among the gang members at their hideout at Vasundhara near Indirapuram in Ghaziabad," said Lal.
Lal said the gang has so far carried out at least 18 big burglaries in upmarket localities of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and UP. The cities which their hunting grounds included Mumbai, Gandhinagar, Jaipur, Udaipur, Surat, Vadodara and Ahmedabad. They were careful not to strike at the same place twice, reports Times of India.
According to the cops, the group had left for Mumbai on September 8 and was operating in Juhu. "The fact that they were coming back with a booty of over Rs 2 crore and that too after 16 days shows they were on a roll. So far, we have solved eight burglaries in Ghaziabad, four in Mumbai, three in Ahmedabad and one each at Surat, Vadodara, Udaipur and Jaipur," said the SSP.
The cops claimed they traced the gang through mobile survelliance. "The gang had recently burgled a house in Vasundhara and was using the stolen mobile. We tracked these calls and came to know they would reach Ghaziabad on Friday night. We arrested them near the UP border when they were coming in a WagonR and a Honda City," said Lal.
The cops claimed that cash worth Rs 2.15 lakh along with valuables like electronic items and others expensive goods worth lakhs were recovered from the accused. "We have contacted the police in other states to determine how many other cases they are involved in," added the SSP.
