To steal cables, this group of thieves posed as BMC workers, dug up a road in Mumbai

To ensure that they committed the theft smoothly without any interruption, the thieves had placed barricades with signs that BMC’s civic work was under progress, the police said.

They carried out digging work only at night to avoid suspicion, did not use any machine and dug up manually using a hoe and spade. The theft occurred last month and surfaced only after MTNL started receiving multiple complaints from their customers that their landline phones were not working.

When MTNL employees went on to check, they were shocked to discover that around a 200-metre stretch of road and the footpath was dug up and underground phone transmission line cables made up of copper were missing. The value of the stolen copper cables was Rs 6.80 lakh, said a police officer. The MTNL officers then filed a complaint with the Matunga police on May 31.

Under the guidance of his seniors, Deepak Chavan, Senior Inspector, Matunga, pressed Santosh Mali, Sub-Inspector, and his team to investigate the matter. Mali’s team scanned the CCTV cameras installed in the residential and commercial units along the dug-up road and, with the help of human intelligence, managed to trace the six suspects on different days in the past week and subsequently place them under arrest.

The accused have been identified as Manish Maganlal Jain, Nikku Chanilal Gupta, Naresh Gopal Ahire, Mahesh Mallesh Budamula, Ashok Ramesh Suryavanshi, and Kailas Devdutt Jadhav.

“The accused had sold the stolen cables. The copper was recovered from the stolen cables. We have also seized 184 kg of stolen copper from them,” said PSI Mali.

On Monday, a local court remanded the accused in police custody until June 16.