15 hours Ago By Sachin Sharma
Slug: Inter-state crime Vadodara: The southern states in the country are the largest consumers of gold jewellery. Burglars from the tribal heartland of Dahod seem to understand this very well, as many of them have made southern states their hunting grounds. Last week, the Coimbatore city police in Tamil Nadu came to Dahod after Dahod police arrested three burglars who were involved in at least four burglary offences there.
They were involved in two burglaries each under Peelamedu and Thudiyalur police station areas. Cash amounting to Rs 6 lakh was seized from them. The case is not an isolated one.
Another team from Tamil Nadu police also came to Dahod looking for burglary accused in Katwara. "Police identified the burglars after nabbing jewellers from Madhya Pradesh who had bought stolen jewellery from the accused. The jewellers led them to the burglars," said inspector S M Gameti of Dahod local crime branch.
The long arms of Dahod burglars came to light in another recent famous case where two burglars were nabbed from Jhalod. They were tracked with the help of night vision cameras in Sept. "They revealed that they had conducted burglaries in Karnataka earlier and were arrested there too," he said.
Gameti pointed out that on five or six occasions this year, they informed police from southern states about burglars from Dahod being involved in incidents there. "It is a regular process now. Many times, they share CCTV footage or other details with us if they are suspicious of someone from Dahod being involved in incidents there," he added.
Dahod superintendent of police Dr Rajdeepsinh Zala said that in most cases, it was the Dahod district police that tipped off other states. "Whenever we nab a burglar, we do a thorough check of their movements. In many cases, their location was found in police station areas where burglaries took place.
We inform the police there about the accused," he said. Zala said that during his tenure, police from all the states from southern India made trips when accused involved in burglaries there were held. Gameti pointed out that the burglars found southern states lucrative for burglaries as they believed that households there had high amounts of gold.
"This made them travel to southern states particularly for burglaries," he said. Earlier, such cases were reported only from those areas where people from Dahod went for labour work. Gameti said that the burglars travelled by train to southern states, committed offences there, and returned to Dahod.
He added that most buyers of stolen goods were in MP and Gujarat..
