Hennur police on Friday arrested five men for allegedly stealing batteries from mobile phone towers in the city.
Hennur police on Friday arrested five men for allegedly stealing batteries from mobile phone towers in the city. The accused have been identified as Lokesh, 29; Naveen N, 23; Muniraj, 29; N Gopi, 30 and Suresh, 29. All five men are school dropouts and hail from Devanahalli taluk.
The men stole batteries from mobile phone towers and sold it to scrap metal dealers in the city. With the money they got, they bought drugs and indulged in other illicit activities.
Preliminary investigations revealed that Lokesh, a class VIII dropout, was the brain behind the operation. He used to work as a technician with a service provider. He quit the company, and fully knowing the value of these mobile phone tower batteries, which cost over `5,000 each, he conspired with his friends and decided to steal them. In the past eight months, the gang stole over 200 batteries from different mobile towers in the city.
Lokesh used fake ID cards of different telecom service providers. He and his friends hired a Toyota Qualis from a private travel agency. They usually hit the towers at night, between 10 pm and 12.30 am, when the tower is left unguarded. However, in places where security guards are deployed, Lokesh got into the premises using his fake ID card. They loaded the stolen batteries to the SUV and sold them to Muddasir, a scrap dealer in Gauribidanur.
So far, the police have seized 178 batteries worth `9 lakh. The gang stole batteries from the mobile phone towers in Yelahanka, Hennur, Devanahalli, Hoskote, Avalahalli, Chikkaballapur and Gauribidanur.
By arresting the five, police have solved 24 cases registered in different police stations across the city. “The information about the gang was passed to the police by Nisa Industrial Security Agency (NISA),” said Bhaskar Rao, a retired police officer, who works in NISA.
The team headed by police inspector H Prabhakar, sub-inspectors RH Bhavan and V Gopinath arrested the gang.
Investigations also revealed that parents of the arrested are farmers and labourers working in nearby villages.
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