A burglar wanted in around 20 cases and who had been evading arrest by hiring auto rickshaws from areas where there are no CCTV cameras has finally been nabbed by unit I of Navi Mumbai crime branch.
The accused, identified as Santosh Trambak Ghanghav (37), was arrested after he was forced to hire an auto immediately after a theft because of his dangling pants. In the last house burglary in Airoli on August 26, he had stolen 43 tola gold, whose weight his track pants pockets were unable to bear and his pants were constantly slipping off his waist. Since he could not walk a long distance with dangling pants, he hired the auto at the nearest auto stand that had a CCTV camera.
“Till now, our biggest challenge was to find his location as we were not able to understand from where he hired an auto and where he got down,” senior police inspector Sunil Shinde said.
With the help of the footage, the police traced the auto driver, who informed that he was dropped near Kalwa bridge and while getting down, he made a call in which he told someone he was coming and to open the door. Using this information, police worked on dump data of the area and zeroed the contact number and traced the location.
“With his arrest, we could solve 20 house break-in cases and recover gold worth ₹28 lakh. Of the 20 cases, 16 were from Rabale and four from Koparkhairane,” Bipin Kumar Singh, commissioner of police, said. The accused, currently in police custody, is illiterate and stayed with his five kids and wife in Kalwa.