Gang involved in 4 thefts in Porvorim

PANAJI: The gang of thieves arrested by the Porvorim police are involved in four house thefts in Porvorim alone, reveals investigations by the police.
Umesh Reddy, 32, his wife Gita Reddy and a relative Santosh Reddy, 19, were arrested by the police along with their friend Sundar Reddy, 19, after they were caught red-handed by the police with the booty they had stolen from a home in Goa Housing Board at Porvorim last Tuesday.While Umesh, Gita and Santosh are residents of Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, Sundar is from Andhra Pradesh. An offence was registered against them under Section 454 (house breaking) and 380 (theft in dwelling house) of IPC.
"The four thefts were committed in the 10 days that they were in Goa. They were staying in a hotel in Calangute", police said.
Police sources said that their modus operandi was simple: they would come as tourists to Goa, stay in a rented room in the coastal belt, move around on rented bikes and strike homes when no one was there in the mornings. While two of them would enter the house by bending the window grills, Gita and another accused would wait outside the house they were robbing to keep a watch and alert the persons inside. "To ensure that no one suspects them they would carry a one-year-old child with them which Gita and Umesh claim is their baby," said police sources.
They were arrested after Manohar Korgaonkar complained that unknown persons robbed his residence by bending the window grills and escaped with gold and silver ornaments worth around ` 1.23 lakh. On Korgaonkar's complaint, the police alerted the police patrolling team in Porvorim and asked them to look for suspicious movement in and around the area. "We found that the four of them had parked their vehicle and were walking around the residential area in Porvorim in a suspicious manner. When a police team approached them they tried to escape. We caught them and on searching the lady's handbag found the stolen gold and silver items", said police sources.