The Pune Rural Police have successfully dismantled a mobile tower theft racket and apprehended five individuals, including employees of a tower company. The police have recovered stolen goods valued at Rs. 13 lakh 50 thousand from the arrested suspects. The thefts occurred across six districts in Maharashtra, and the police have managed to solve all the cases.
The arrested individuals have been identified as Ramesh Mallappa Garsangi (33), Prashant Vaman Yadav (31), Suhas Sriram Lad (40), Javed Hamidullah Khan (33), and Sachin Ganpat Kadam (41). Among them, three are employees of GTL Infra Company. After being produced in court, all the suspects have been remanded in judicial custody.
GTL Infra Company's towers were stolen
According to the police, GTL Infra Company had established mobile towers in various districts of Maharashtra back in 2008. However, many towers in the region were no longer operational. Exploiting this situation, the accused identified non-functioning towers, approached landowners with forged documents and letterheads of the tower company, and then stole the inactive towers, posing as GTL employees.
Thefts went unnoticed
The thefts went unnoticed as the landowners assumed that the company officials had removed the towers themselves and never lodged any complaints. In total, the accused stole over 200 towers from different parts of Maharashtra, with a focus on Pune, Satara, Sangli, Ratnagiri, and Beed districts. It was only after the company officials realized the magnitude of the thefts that they filed a complaint with the police.
The Pune Rural Police had already registered a case of mobile tower theft at Karegaon and Ranjangaon police stations in Pune. During their investigation, they detained the five accused individuals from Karnataka. The police are currently conducting further inquiries into the case to gather more evidence and gather a complete understanding of the theft racket.
