4 held for stealing, selling 4,500 MB taps

Halia (Nalgonda): District police has arrested four persons in connection with stealing of Rs 10 lakhworth taps of Mission Bhagiratha scheme dumped on water plant premises in Halia.

The arrested were identified as Vemula Sai Kumar (20), Vemula Kotesh (23) and Vemula Mallesh (25), all three from Halia and V Santhosh (40) of Bidar, residing at Bagh Amberpet in Hyderabad.

On Monday, producing the arrested before the media in Halia, Miryalaguda DSP Srinivas informed that based on complaint of contractor Chennu Narsimha Reddy of MSR Contractors about missing of 4,500 taps to be used for intra village works of Mission Bhagiratha dumped on the premises of water treatment plant in Halia, the local police filed a case on May 5 and took up the investigation.

One of the accused, Vemula Sai Kumar, is a school dropout, and by making his friends believe that he has working for Mission Bhagiratha during holidays, Sai Kumar with the help of his friends stole 4,500 taps dumped on the premises of water plant in Halia and stocked at his residence. With the help of his brother Kotesh, Sai Kumar sold the taps to his relative Mallesh who runs a scrap purchasing centre in Halia.

On a tip off, on Monday, the police raided Sai Kumar's residence and recovered as many as 298 stolen taps from the house. Both Sai Kumar and Kotesh, during police quizzing, explained the whole stealing episode of taps dumped at water plant in Halia. Based on the information of the duo, the police arrested Mallesh and his friend Santosh and recovered 2,207 taps from Mallesh and 2,000 taps from Santosh. DSP Srinivas informed that the total worth of recovered taps was worth Rs 10 lakh. He appreciated Halia CI Dhanunjaya and his staff for their success and for arresting the accused in the case.