Crime Branch Control Unit bust steel rod theft racket

In a major raid carried out on Friday, the Crime Branch (CB) Control Unit of the Mumbai police busted a steel rod theft racket at a weigh bridge located in Deonar.

The racket was being run for the past several days and acting on a tip-off, officials caught the accused red-handed while they were stealing steel rods meant for construction companies.

The modus operandi of the accused was to get the trucks bringing steel rods onto the weigh bridge and in connivance with the driver and cleaner of the trucks, weigh bridge workers would shift around 500 kilograms to one tonne of the total carriage into an empty truck.

Weigh bridge officials would then issue a receipt with the original weight of the steel rods during the time of loading at Wada and surrounding industrial areas.

“We found a truck with seven to eight tonnes of stolen steel. Further inquiries led us to a godown in Saki Naka where we found another 200 to 250 tonnes of steel rods stocked,” said police inspector Rakesh Sharma from the CB Control Unit.

He added, “Though the accused involved have said that they have receipts for the purchase of the steel rods, the truck drivers said that the steel rods stocked in the godown were all part of the stolen consignments. We have taken twenty people into custody and are questioning them.”

The seized steel rods could be worth more than Rs5 crore and it is suspected that the accused would have made crores of rupees from the thefts conducted mostly every day.