Professional temple theft offenders arrested in LB Nagar; property worth Rs.19.4L seized

Hyderabad: The sleuths of the Central Crime Station, LB Nagar team, along with the Rachakonda IT cell and the LB Nagar police, on 22 January arrested four persons who had robbed several temples in the city.

The arrested have been identified as Poonuri Chinna Satyanandan alias Sathish (31), Gandam Sammaiah (24), and Jangala Prasad (27) of Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and Daravath Naveen (25) of Nalgonda district. Another member of the gang, Mangla Nagendar, is absconding.

The police averted another major theft and seized oxygen cylinders, gas cutters, and other tools that the gang had kept ready to rob another place.

The police seized gold ornaments worth Rs.10.75 lakh, a car worth Rs. 5 lakh, a Bullet motorbike worth Rs. 1.50 lakh, another bike worth Rs. 80,000, and some tools worth Rs. 1.35 lakh. The seized properties were worth Rs. 19.40 lakh.

The gang would steal cars and motorcycles and change their number plates. They used to recce the temples during the day in the stolen vehicles and break into the temples at night and steal gold and silver ornaments.

On 3 December 2021, at around 10:30 p.m, Sri Kumbari Madhav Maharaj locked the temple after the rituals and went home. The next day, at around 4:30 a.m, his relative Ravi reached the temple and found out that it had been robbed. On hearing the news, Kumbari Madhav Maharaj rushed to the temple and found that the temple's main door had been broken and the gold ornaments were stolen. The stolen gold weighed about 21.5 tolas.

The arrested people also confessed to 10 other crimes they had committed, of which four were temple thefts.