Juinagar robbery: Malegaon jeweller arrested

Mumbai: Two police teams visited Malegaon and arrested a jeweller in connection with the Bank of Baroda robbery case at Juinagar.

The police said that the accused sold jewellery to three different jewellers in town. The accused allegedly previously carried out four robberies in different areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat, and sold jewellery to the same jewellers. The Navi Mumbai police is gathering further details.

The Navi Mumbai police teams went to Malegaon in search of the jewellers to whom the accused sold jewellery they stole from Bank of Baroda. One of the jewellers arrested Sunday night has been identified as Sanjay Wagh.

According to sources, this is not the accused’s first robbery in Maharashtra. The group has always sold stolen jewellery to the same jewellers in Malegaon. Their modus operandi is to pass on the loot so fast that police is unable to retrieve anything. The police is yet to arrest two more jewellers.

On November 13, the Navi Mumbai police identified four persons as part of the group that burgled a Bank of Baroda branch in Juinagar over the weekend, by digging a 25-feet tunnel from an adjacent office they had hired in May to the bank’s locker room. The gang, said to be from Jharkhand, decamped with cash and jewellery from 30 bank lockers. More than Rs 3 crore was lost by people having lockers in the bank.

Two days ago, the four accused were arrested. One of them had opened an account in a bank under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (scheme for the poor), and used to visit the bank often.