Crook caught red-footed, six robberies solved

AHMEDABAD: The signature style of red shoes worn by one of them gave away a gang of armed robbers, with police arresting all seven who had gathered at Jamalpur underpass to pull off a heist on Sunday. Cops are searching for three other members of the gang responsible for the recent hold ups of Writer Safeguard Pvt Ltd employees carrying cash. Former top cop Julio Ribeiro is security consultant of the company.
"On Sunday morning, we received information that a man wearing red shoes was waiting with six others in Jamalpur, apparently ready for a robbery. A team reached the spot and nabbed them," said a crime branch official.
"A country-made pistol, three live cartridges and Rs50,000 in cash was seized from the accused," he said.
Interestingly, the robbers had also marked their targets by the colour of their bags. Two of the accused are readymade garment traders.
"The robbers found it easy to target company employees as they always used bags of a particular colour to carry cash, making them easy to spot, and thus vulnerable," said a crime branch source.
Deepan Bhadran, DCP, crime branch, said, "We went through CCTV footage gathered from the crime spots and found suspicious presence of a man wearing red shoes just before robberies were committed on July 26 at Vastrapur and on August 16 at Anandnagar."
"While checking footage of the route taken by the robbers to flee, we saw a man abandoning a bike and moving into an auto with a bag. We spotted someone in the auto was wearing the same pair of red shoes," Bhadran said.
Immediately, police activated their intelligence network to watch for hoods in red shoes.
Sleuths saw their efforts pay off on Sunday when information on the gang of robbers having assembled at Jamalpur underpass came in.
Crime branch sources said the robbers have been identified as Sanat Jain, Niraj Gupta, Mangesh Chavda, Rakesh Yadav, Ravindra Rai, Mahendra Patil and Veerbhadrasinh Rehvar, while three of the gang are still at large.