Two arrested for dacoity, robbery

The Thane Rural crime branch has arrested two persons from Titwala in connection with robbery and dacoity in Palghar, Titwala, Murbad, Kulganv, Nerul and Karjat. The accused have 13 cases of theft registered against them, in ten of which, shootouts had occurred.

The police has recovered two pistols, two country-made guns, 51 round bullets, three choppers, two sickles, masks and one motor bike from them. Interestingly, police found a pair of handcuffs from them, which — they revealed — they had stolen from the house of a policeman in Gujarat.

The accused have been identified as Devashish Tarapad Bak AKA Ashish Sandip Gungun AKA Ashish Diwakar Ganguly (39), who hails from West Bengal and stays in Titwala and Shankar Kanchan Das (27), who used to work as domestic help in Devashish’s house for Rs 8,000 per month.

The Thane Rural SP Rajesh Pradhan said that the duo had some idiosyncrasies like they would never rob or assault women, they would call shop owners to inform them about the incident and taking proper precautions to avoid similar such things in future. Police sources said they have six cases registered against them in Thane; three in Raigadh, one in Palghar and three in Gujarat.

Police sources said Devashish was a Commerce graduate and had deep knowledge of banking so he had opened seven bank accounts and had three PAN cards to avoid getting caught. “Devashish has knowledge of nine to ten languages and we are trying to track if he committed more crimes in other states as well. In 2008, after breaking into a shop of gold ornaments, Devashish called the shop owner and informed that had only stolen silver ornaments from their shop and broken the backside wall so the shop owner would do well to repair the wall else another thief could take advantage,” informed a police source.