Navi Mumbai: Panvel Police Arrest 5 Watchmen-Turned-Dacoits For Mumbai-Pune Expressway Robbery

Navi Mumbai: Panvel Taluka police has arrested a gang of five men who worked as watchmen in the day time and later at night did dacoity on Mumbai-Pune expressway. During the investigation of a similar loot, the police traced and nabbed five men on Sunday and are on look out of three more men.

The accused have been identified as Rohan alia Guddu Naik (24), Rohidas Pawar (23), Atesh Waghmare (26), Manish Waghmare (35) and Shankar Waghmare (18). The driver Gendlal Ramgarib Patel (35) was attacked and threatened by the gang while he had stopped at the expressway on the night of September 9 to answer nature’s call.

Patel was threatened to handover the money he had failing which he could get killed and hence he gave away Rs 23,000 cash. With the help of cctv footage, police found that Naik is a history sheeter with at least three cases of dacoity already registered in Khalapur wherein the gang used to block the highway with sack of rice and when a driver would get down to check on the sack, he would be robbed.

With the information that Naik was a history sheeter, the police procured his mobile numbers and traced the accused to Nimbodewadi village in Khalapur. “A team was assigned to visit the village and track the movements of the accused. For two days the team stayed in the village and eventually nabbed five of them,” said senior police inspector Anil Patil from Panvel Taluka police station.

The accused were arrested under the sections 309 (4) – Robbery with extortion and 309 (6) – Robbery with 10 years imprisonment of the BNS. Following the investigation and nabbing of the accused further section 310 (2) – Dacoity was included. The accused have been remanded to police custody till September 20.