NT Reporter | Panaji
Bringing a disturbing trend to the fore, Goa police on Thursday said a former employee of the Nayak family is the mastermind in the Baina dacoity case.
The investigation has established that the accused, all originating from Balasore district in Odisha, had adopted a planned modus operandi.
The accused would seek employment as domestic workers and later target the same households. “By observing internal layouts, access routes and security gaps during their employment, they gathered information that facilitated commission of the offence,” said Director General of Police (DGP) Alok Kumar adding that, “they are not part of any gangs”.
The police have arrested six accused persons in connection with the case and one of them is Suresh alias Golak Malik.
“One of the accused who worked with the victim’s family is the mastermind,” said Kumar addressing the media at the police headquarters in the city on Thursday.
The other five arrested are Bijoy Kumar Swain, Banshidhar Malik, Suryakant Malik, Rajesh alias Sharat Malik and Markandya Malik. Police are on the lookout for one more accused in the case.
South Goa Superintendent of Police Tikam Singh Verma said that the accused quit his helper job around eight months ago. “He used to work a year ago and his tenant verification was not done,” said Verma.
Responding to a question if the Nayak family had identified the accused during the dacoity, Verma said, “It was dark and in that condition, they could not identify that particular person.”
Kumar said that multiple teams were constituted to investigate into the case. “I feel good that Goa police took this case as a challenge because it was a serious incident. And after a lot of hard work and all the leads that were coming up during the investigation like CCTV camera footage, intelligence collection of criminal elements and technical surveillance, we achieved the breakthrough,” said Kumar.
The DGP said the police found out about the implements that were used to break into the flat. “A lot of hard work was done on all these leads,” Kumar said adding, “based on the leads, we understood that the suspects were currently in Maharashtra’s Bhiwandi, Kalyan and Badlapur areas”.
Kumar said that multiple teams were sent to Maharashtra and one team was sent to Odisha. “Ultimately, after a lot of hard work and continuous surveillance, we arrested six individuals in this case. And almost all of the loot has been recovered. We will talk to the victim’s family and see if there is anything else left,” said Kumar.
Police said that as per the complaint, valuables, including cash, all worth around Rs 35 lakh were looted by the dacoits.
