BHOPAL: Exposing the state of security in Madhya Pradesh’s commercial capital Indore, five to six masked men reportedly broke into the house of state Congress president Jitu Patwari on Friday-Saturday intervening night.
The unidentified men first cut the power supply to Patwari’s house in the Bijalpur area (to ensure that the CCTV cameras were disabled), then broke into the part of the house that housed the former MP minister’s office.
They subsequently broke the drawers and lockers in Patwari’s office, but surprisingly left behind mobile phones and valuables, raising the possibility of the entire incident not being of any typical robbery, but something much bigger than it.
Not only did they strike at the office section of Patwari’s house in the residential locality under Rajendra Nagar area, but they also targeted two to three neighbouring houses, including the house of Nagar Panchayat CMO Rajkumar Thakur and MP Electricity Board (MPEB) officer Narendra Dubey’s residence, during their two-and-a-half-hour movement in the area.
While the masked men had ensured that their movements weren’t captured in the CCTV cameras at Patwari’s house, their furtive movement was captured by cameras installed outside the house of Thakur and Dubey.
When the residents of those houses (which were intruded upon by the masked men) woke up in the morning, they found their window nets cut.
Sources in the Indore police suspect that the Bank Tanda gang could be involved, as a spate of robberies in Rajendra Nagar, Tejaji Nagar and Rau areas of western Indore, have been committed in the past by the members of the same gang.
While many of the members of the gang have been nabbed in the past, some of them are reportedly out on bail and might have become active again in the same areas, an Indore police officer suspected.