150 ATM robberies solved, Kolkata Police arrests matermind of a Haryana gang

KOLKATA: The ATM loot gang finally nabbed by the Kolkata police detective department has been involved in over 150 robberies across seven Indian states in the past few months. The total loot from Bengal alone stands around Rs 1 crore, claimed sources. The Howrah Pilkhana resident Kalam Sheikh arrested in this respect has himself told interrogators that his gang had targeted 13 of the 14 loots reported from Kolkata, Howrah, Barrackpore, Bidhannagar and Hooghly police areas in the past three weeks.
Though Kalam had the major role of providing logistics, his north Indian gang travelled by air and rail to carry out precise strikes at ATMs. Based on Kalam's questioning, a police team recovered Rs 15.71 lakh from his hideout in Kulti near Asansol.
According to police sources, the accused Kalam's two aides - Samsad and Raju - who are being questioned might soon help cops reach some of the other accused. The arrest in itself is a result of co-ordination of a number of police forces - the Kolkata police and three commissionarates of Barrackpore, Howrah and Bidhannagar - shared details with Telengana and Gujarat police. The butcher of Pilkhana, Kalam had been arrested once earlier but few could realize that he was the one who provided shelter to an inter-state gang having its roots in Haryana. He was arrested from Dhanbad railway station when he was fleeing to Delhi on the Rajdhani after the Dhanbad GRP was tipped by Kolkata police.
Sources insist the arrest took some time after pinpointed investigations. "As of now, on May 3 the gang targeted ATMs at Howrah's Sankrail, Alampur in Domjur and Makardaha. The next day, the gang targeted the ATMs at Dum Dum Private Road, Sinthee and Nagerbazar. On May 10, their targets were ATMs at Rajarhat and Sreerampore.
"We had pieced together evidence from different sources. We found out from Telengana police that those carrying out ATM robberies had a north Indian accent. We also came to know that among those who booked a hotel room at Howrah was between May 17 and 18 were from Haryana. We connected these two apparently different dots after we received CCTV footage from a Madhyagram ATM. We found a symbol in the car they were using and appraised all the neighbouring districts. At Icchapur, the Barrackpore City police gave them a chase and the accused fled without carrying out the robbery. We traced the owner to Midnapore who said he had sold the car to accused Kalam on May 13 for a mere Rs 3 lakh. It was then that we found that as a butcher, Kalam frequented this north Indian state often. We put Kalam on surveillance and finally arrested them," said a police investigator.