Cell phone tower battery thieves held in Warangal

Warangal: The Raiparthy police on Tuesday busted an interstate gang, which was involved in the theft of batteries from the towers installed at the mobile service network stations and arrested four persons and seized Rs 2 lakh cash from them. The accused have been identified as Abid Malik, Mustaq, Dilshad and Md Umar. Mustaqin Hameed and Bola Ishad are at large. All the accused belong to Meerut district in Uttar Pradesh.

West Zone DCP Srinivas Reddy said that Mustaq and Malik, who used to transport apples from Srinagar to Bengaluru, formed a gang with four others and started to steal batteries installed at the mobile service networks towers. They purchased a car for the purpose. While three of them used to travel in the lorry the others followed them in the car.

On their way back from Bengaluru, the gang used to steal the batteries from the unmanned mobile network towers in the nights. The accused used to remove all the 24 batteries installed at a tower and shift to lorry using their car. The gang so far stolen batteries from six towers spread across Jangaon, Mahabubabad and Nagarkurnool districts. The stolen batteries were sold in Meerut, the police said. The police which formed a special team zeroed in on the accused with the help of CCTV camera footage. The police team which went to Meerut arrested four of the six with the help of their counterparts.

Commissioner of Police V Ravinder lauded the Wardhannapet ACP Ramesh, Inspector Vishweshwar, Sub-Inspector Laxman Rao and the others for nabbing the accused.