BSES employee held for theft

A BSES contractual supervisor was arrested for stealing cable wire worth Rs 10 lakh from Jamia Milia University Metro Station using a crane. Police recovered the entire stolen cable wire from him.

"The accused, Ashwani Kumar alias Bablu, 37, was arrested on the basis of evidence from the CCTV footage. He was earlier in jail for four years in a murder and robbery case in Gurgaon," said Chinmoy Biswas, Deputy Commissioner of Police, South-East.

According to the police, on December 5, a complaint was received from BSES contractor Karan Sharma, who said that someone had stolen a wooden drum containing cables. He informed the police that the wire was 492 metre-long and weighed around 4,400 kg. The wire worth Rs 10 lakh was stolen from the under-construction Jamia Milia University Metro Station site," said the officer.

Police scanned the list of previous cases where the modus operandi was the same. Cops scanned relevant CCTV footage from various BSES godowns and under-construction metro sites. In one such footage, a crane and a tempo were seen passing in front of a hospital at night. The crane owner was traced down and he informed that a BSES employee had hired him for lifting the cable wire roll.

Police further traced the BSES contractual labour supervisor Kumar who confessed to the crime. Kumar earlier worked as a cab driver and had been working for BSES for the past one year as a labour supervisor. In 2006, he was arrested in a murder-cum-robbery case in Gurugram and was lodged at Bhondsi Jail till 2010.

Kumar was looking for scrap dealers in Okhla and Badarpur areas to sell off the wire. He even tried to fix a deal with around four dealers, but most refused to buy the wire because it was government property. He was also looking for dealers outside Delhi to dispose the cable. He told the police that he had dumped the cable roll behind Batra Hospital in the jungle area from where the wire was recovered. He was previously involved in a case of attacking a public servant.