Bhopal News: GRP Nabs Foreign-Return Engineer For Train Thefts Linked To Gaming Addiction

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Government Railway Police (GRP) have arrested a notorious high-profile thief involved in multiple thefts aboard long-distance trains, targeting sleeping passengers in AC coaches.

The accused, identified as Pranjal Dixit, a B.Tech graduate and foreign-returned professional from Lucknow, reportedly turned to crime due to his addiction to online gaming.

Railway Superintendent of Police Rahul Kumar Lodha said on January 20, Afsha Begum (52), a resident of Agra, reported that she was travelling from Agra to Mumbai in the AC-1 coach of Rajdhani Express when, at Bhopal railway station, an unidentified miscreant stole her purse containing gold jewellery, cash worth Rs 35,000 and documents worth Rs 3.40 lakh.

GRP officials said that after scanning footage from nearly 200 CCTV cameras, the suspect, Pranjal Dixit, was taken into custody. During interrogation, Dixit confessed to committing thefts in separate train journeys. Officials said Pranjal, a Lucknow resident, had studied B.Tech at Pune University, worked abroad, and returned to India before developing an addiction to online gaming.

Police recovered gold jewellery worth around Rs 7 lakh from Dixit, including a mangalsutra pendant, two gold chains, a pair of earrings and two rings. The accused claimed to have lost the stolen cash in online gaming and betting.

GRP has registered four theft cases against him and produced Dixit before the court, which remanded him to police custody for further questioning to ascertain his involvement in other similar thefts.