The Arasikere Railway police busted an inter-state gang of three robbing train passengers after sedating them with badam milk

Pramesh S Jain & Yogesh K Porwar

The Mangaluru railway police busted an inter-state gang of three robbing train passengers after sedating them with badam milk

Based on a complaint filed by a couple from Jodhpur in November last year who were robbed of their 120 grams of gold valuables and cash ₹ 20,000.

A team of police inspector Sanjeev Gowda and his team swung into action and track down the accused based on the tatkal tickets the accused had bought.

Dr.Soumyalatha SK,Superintendent of police,Railways, who supervised the investigation said that the accused the prime accused Mohammed Shaukat,55,and his associates Mohammed Sattar,51,from Kolkata in West Bengal,and Mohammed Awad,58,from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.

They had given fake mobile phone numbers while availing the tickets.But the police started analysing the phone numbers obtained through tower dump and zeroed in on three mobile numbers which were found operational in Raichur and Puttaparthi .

Based on the information,the police tracked down the accused and arrested them.

Investigation revealed that the accused used to target victims travelling in trains with a longer travel time (one or two days),especially those coming from the northern part of the country.

They used to approach unsuspecting victims and befriend them.When the train was nearing the destination,they gave them juices laced with sleeping pills (avil)which helped the accused to remove the valuables and escape without resistance.

Preliminary investigation revealed that Shaukat’s involved in three cases registered at railway police stations in

Thiruvananthapuram,Nagercoil and Garden Reach in Kolkata.

The police have alerted their counterparts in different states who are awaiting to take the accused into their custody for further investigation.

He had larger gang and use different gang members each time,a senior officer told reporters.