Bhojpur police crack South Bihar Gramin Bank dacoity case, 5 criminals nabbed

Kumar Rajiv Nayan

Ara : With the arrest of five criminals including notorious criminal Bottle Mahto from Sonepur Fair in Saran District in North Bihar on November 20, 2019, Bhojpur police claim to have cracked the case of dacoity in South Bihar Gramin Bank in Anaith locality under Nawada police station, Ara, on November 18, 2019.

Police brought them over to Ara on November 21. Police also seized a mobile phone, a motorcycle and Rs 2 lakh cash from the possession of Bottle Mahato. Police also seized the luxury car used in the bank dacoity and brought it over to the police station. Bhojpur SP Sushil Kumar had formed a police team to investigate the matter and also arrest the miscreants at the earliest.

SHO, Nawada police station, said that about a dozen armed miscreants came in an SUV and on motorcycle, entered the South Bihar Gramin Bank at Bazaar Samiti under Nawada police station on November 18, 2019, around 1.30 pm and looted about Rs 30.26 lakh and escaped at around 1.50 pm. The miscreants also thrashed the bank manager and injured him and fired at least six rounds inside the bank to terrorise the employees and customers.

The SHO said that the police team got information that five miscreants wanted in the bank loot case had entered a theatre to see dances of bar girls at Sonepur Fair on November 19, 2019. The police team and DIU team immediately swung into action and reached Sonepur and located the five miscreants watching dance of Bar girls inside the theatre. The police team waited for them outside the theatre in civil uniform and when the miscreants came out of the theatre in the morning on November 20, 2019, police arrested all the five miscreants including Bottle Mahato, a resident of Ratnadh village under Gadhani police station in Bhojpur district. At least 32 cases of murder, robbery, bank loot, extortion, Arms act  are pending against him with  different police station in Bhojpur, Buxar and other districts.

Bottle Mahto was arrested from Rupaspur locality in Patna along with his six aides and 7.65mm pistol in connection with firing on the house of Mukhia, Karwasin, Asha Rani, at Charkhambha gali under Ara Town police station on December 19, 2017, when her husband, Gaushankar Sharma, refused to pay extortion amount to him. He had looted a Scorpio after killing its owner Sourabh Kumar under Barhara police station area on November 14, 2019. He was granted bail in July 2019.is year and was released from Beur jail in Patna. He fires with both hands and ran a gang named B-company and recruited minor and teenage school children in his gang. The other four arrested miscreants are residents of Khagaul area in Patna.

The SHO said that  police suspected hands of Bottle Mahao and his gang in bank dacoity as he was involved in the bank loot cases in the past too. Police got photographs of miscreants and when they were tallied with the CCTV footage, police identified the miscreants and intensified their action to arrest them.