A 49-year-old homemaker from Kamrawan in Bihar’s Samastipur had arranged the logistics for the gang that robbed a jewellery shop in Howrah’s Domjur a month ago, police said on Thursday.
Asha Devi, alias Chachi, was among the five arrested for their alleged involvement in the dacoity at MS Gems and Jewellers Sons on the Howrah-Amta road on June 11.
The police said some of the accused were former associates of the alleged Bihar-based gangster Subodh Singh, who had been lodged in Beur jail in Patna till the Bengal CID took his custody recently.
Singh was allegedly threatening businessmen in North 24-Parganas from the prison.
A special team of the Howrah Police Commissionerate scanned the records of criminals in several districts of Bihar, including Samatispur, Begusarai and Saharsa, for around a month and checked CCTV footage before zeroing in on Asha Devi and the rest for their alleged involvement in the Domjur robbery.
“A few months before the robbery at the jewellery shop in Domjur, the gang members had put up at a rented accommodation in Asansol’s Hirapur. Asha Devi helped the robbers find the house. She took help of a relative, who is now in a jail in Bihar. The relative was involved in the robbery, too,” Praveen Kumar Tripathi, the commissioner of Howrah police, said on Thursday.
“Two motorcycles that were used in the robbery were purchased with the help of another relative of Asha Devi.”
Some time in May, the gang members shifted from Asansol to a rented accommodation in Kalitala in Ankurhati, near Domjur, the police said. Every day, the members would go on a recce to select the jewellery shop that they thought would be the easiest to rob.
“The gang members wanted to target a jewellery shop that would be safe to rob. They wanted to make sure that no one from outside could make out that a robbery was being committed inside,” a senior officer of the Howrah commissionerate said.
“The shop on the Howrah-Amta road — MS Gems and Jewellers Sons — met the criteria. The robbers didn’t even roll the shutters down while looting ornaments holding the owner and the staff at gunpoint.”
The investigators came to know from CCTV footage and other sources that after the robbery, some of the gang members left the state through Durgapur Expressway and others boarded a train.
“Similar incidents over the last few years in some police station areas in Howrah suggested the involvement of a gang from Bihar. This time, too, it seemed a gang from the neighbouring state was involved,” Tripathi said.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has been vocal about the alleged involvement of gangs from other states in crimes, including robberies and extortion, in Bengal.
Soon after this, the Bengal CID took custody of Subodh Singh after bringing him to Calcutta from the Patna jail.
“Some of the members of this particular gang (Asha Devi and others) had worked for Subodh Singh. Later, they set up a gang of their own. Asha Devi’s role is to provide all the necessary logistical support,” the police commissioner said.
“She would arrange accommodation when the gang had to move to a new address. She would even play a crucial role in disposing of the robbed jewellery.”
