Pramesh S Jain
The Railway police on Wednesday busted a gang and arrested one of the gang member who are stealing mobile phones from the passengers of Vande Bharat train.
The accused Suraj Paswan, 26,native of West Bengal and residing with his associates at a rented house in Marathahalli .
A total of 49 phones out of which 13 i phones worth Rs. 28.3 lakh were recovered from him,Soumyalatha SK, Superintendent of Police,Railways,said .
The accused is one among the five members recruited by a kingpin and they were operating in Vande Bharat train to target passengers carrying expensive phones , Ms.Soumyalatha,said .
The racket was busted based on a complaint from a passenger who lost a apple phone worth Rs.61,128 while boarding Golgumbaz train for Vijayapura on July 2 .
Based on a series of mobile theft cases,Ms. Soumyalatha formed a special team who kept a watch before zeroing in on Suraj in a platform of city railway station moving suspiciously .
The police recovered a expensive phone from him and found that the phone belonged to different person.A Detailed inquiry led him to confess to the crime and recovery of the stolen phones .
The Kingpin and the other associates were presently on the run and efforts are on to track them down,Ms. Soumyalatha said.
The accused were hired by kingpin from his home town and trained on how to pick phones making use of crowd while getting in the train and how to escape .
Each teams are given task to target trains and the stolen phones the accused would sell it in grey market she added.
