In a significant breakthrough, the CID has arrested from Bihar a man in connection with last year’s incident where gold and cash were looted at the Muthoot Finance Limited branch in Siliguri.
The daring daylight armed robbery at the Burdwan Road branch on 24 August had hit headlines and is being considered one of the major armed robberies in recent history of the region. At least five miscreants robbed gold and cash amounting to around Rs 10 crore from the finance company, which also offers cash loans against gold deposits.
They also left two persons injured while they decamped with the loot. Around a month later, police arrested five persons from Odisha who allegedly helped the prime accused in providing SIM cards illegally.
Sources said the police had launched a search for the gang in Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Chattisgarh, but without significant headway. Police sources said the agency have arrested Ramesh Kumar after conducting a joint operation with the Bihar police in the Bidupur block in Vaishali district on 17 June.
“Preliminary investigations suggest that he had come to Siliguri in June last year and started staying in a rented house at Bagdogra. He again came here in July, and with the help of others in the gang they started monitoring the Burdwan Road branch of the finance company. After the crime, the miscreants had gone up to Galgalia, the Bengal-Bihar border on motorcycles.
After that they divided the loot,” sources said. “The CID acted on the basis of leads and finally nabbed him in a joint operation,” they added. He was brought here on transit remand on 22 June and the court has remanded him in eight days’ CID custody. “He is being interrogated,” the sources said. It is learnt that other cases of robbery and murder were pending against him in some other states too.