With the arrest of four persons,the Haryana Police has claimed to have busted an inter-state gang of highway robbers. Weapons and ammunition worth Rs 1.5 crore and two luxury cars have been recovered from their possession,the police said. The four accused,including a woman accomplice,were planning a strike on the Chandigarh-Delhi highway on Friday night when they were arrested after an exchange of gunfire near Issargarh,Kurukshetra. The accused are Ludhianas Rajiv Raja alias Lucky,Amritsars Ramandeep alias Romi alias Jassi,Delhis Bhupinder Singh alias Bhuppi and Ferozepurs Rekha Rani. Rajiv Raja is the mastermind of the gang. He hit the headlines in January this year after he escaped from the custody of the Punjab Police, Haryana DGP Ranjiv Dalal said. Besides a Honda Accord and Honda Civic car,75 revolvers and pistols,10 shotguns,1 carbine and heavy ammunitions along with forged documents have been recovered from them. The weapons they were using,Dalal said,were the ones the gang looted from a gun-house in Hoshiarpur recently. It was after two sensational robberies in Panchkula and Chandigarh that the Haryana police had constituted a Special Investigating Team to nab the accused,who targeted commuters and houses along the highway. The gang used to strike every second day,mostly in Punjab,IG (Ambala range),K K Sindhu,said. "Though the gang was from Punjab,they deliberately conversed in Haryanvi in front of the victims to mislead the police," said DGP Dalal. All four used fake IDs and had ATM cards of well-known banks. Rajiv Raja (30),for example,had an ATM card of HDFC Bank and fake ID in the name of Ankur Jain. Raja,who studied till Class XII,worked as a cameraman for a local cable network before he took to a life of crime. He was helped in his job by his friend Rekha Rani (28). It was the collective effort of Inspector Aman,Inspector Rajesh and Inspector Kulbhushan that led to the breakthrough, Dalal said. Besides cash prizes,we would recommend promotions for them. The accused,lodged in Kurukshetar jail at present,will be produced in the court on Sunday. They would be taken into police remand. Then the investigation and the process of recovery would start, Superintendent of Police,Panchkula,Amitabh Dhillon,said.
