In a breakthrough, the police arrested 10 professional criminals from different parts of Seraikela-Kharsawan district on Monday.

Manoj Sarkar, wanted in connection with the murder of builder-cum-land dealer Ranjit Baij in February, was also arrested during this raid.

During the arresting spree, the police confiscated seven pistols (including two 7.65 MM) and a large quantity of ammunition along with two cars and 10 mobile phones from those arrested.

Talking about the breakthrough, Seraikela-Kharsawan superintendent of police, Mohammed Arshi, hinted at a timely tip-off playing a crucial role in having the criminals arrested. He also revealed that the gangsters were conspiring to commit some grievous crime in the Adityapur area sometime in the next two-three days.

“Acting on the tip-off, we formed separate teams of police officers and had them carry out random search operations, especially at the police checking points across the district on Sunday evening. During one such check, one of the police teams intercepted a car at Chowka and nabbed three suspected criminals, namely Domnik Samsung, Adhir Pradhan, and Dipu Ojha. The team recovered two pistols from them. During interrogation, the trio confessed that they had committed crimes in and around the district,” said Arshi while talking to the newsmen at Adityapur thana on Monday.

The superintendent of police further revealed that based on information they got from the arrested individuals many more arrests were made from Kharsawan. The vital leads also helped the police officers recover fire-arms from them. On further interrogation, they admitted to having committed the crimes in an organised manner and that they were supposed to attend a meeting of the gang members in Adityapur where their leader Manoj Sarkar was also supposed to address them.

Based on these leads, the police formed a network of cops to spread across, Nimdih block of the district, where Sarkar was staying at an undisclosed location. Early on Monday morning, they succeeded in nabbing the gangster.

“On being interrogated, Manoj confessed to having used his gang to settle railway contracts and also for real estate deals in both land sale-purchase in Seraikela-Kharsawan district and Jamshedpur. He also confessed to having conspired the murder of Ranjit Baij at Adityapur in February, earlier this year,” said the senior police officer.

Arshi also pointed out that Sarkar’s gang would influence the process of railway tender for any project starting from the Chakradharpur up to Kharagpur, and would bully the other contractors so that the tender would be bagged by his men. In lieu of the favour Sarkar and his men would get lucrative returns from the contractors concerned.

Similarly, the gang would make itself of every land deal and would extort money from both the seller and buyer of the land.

According to the SP, Sarkar had set up the new gang after the gangster Akhilesh Singh was arrested and his gang began to weaken.

Those arrested during the raid have been identified as Manoj Sarkar, Adhir Pradhan, Domnic Samsung, Dipu Ojha, Gyani Kumar Sahu, Debabrata Goswami alias Debu Das, Shusant Pradhan, Santosh Banra, Totan Dutta, and Bijay Sahu.

On Monday afternoon, after having the Covid test for the arrested criminals being performed all the arrested criminals were sent to Seraikela divisional jail following their subsequent production before a judicial magistrate.