VIJAYAPURA: Vijayawada police have identified the culprit who broke into silver articles and made off with money in the hundi with stolen Sai Baba temple in Prasadampadu and here in the early hours of Wednesday.
According to commissioner of police AB Venkateswara Rao, the finger prints obtained from the scene of offence had matched with those of one inter-state criminal Prakash Kumar Sahu who is an expert in breaking into temples.
On the fateful night, Sahu had broken into the temple using gas cutters, wrenches, screw drivers to steal gold jewellery and cash in hundi.
Though there was a cc camera, it could not take the picture of the accused since it was focused more on the idol of Saibaba. “Had it been focused on the entrance into the sanctum sanctorum of the temple, we could have identified the culprit much earlier,” the commissioner said, adding that efforts are on to arrest him.
The clues team which had visited the scene of offence after laborious effort suspected that the operation was pulled off by Sahu since the modu operandi tallied with his. Moreover, the fingerprints obtained from the temple matched with Sahu’s.
Sahu belongs to Bhilai in Madhya Prasdesh, after tenth standard, began resorting to thefts. He was arrested in connection with two burglaries in houses in 1997 in Cuttuk and after release from jail resumed committing burglaries in temples.
He has a record of committing theft in 1998 at Arasaville temple in Srikakulam and in the same year he stole jewellery from a temple in Parvathipuram. Again in the same year, he was involved in the robbery at the Kanakadurga temple in Vijayawada. He committed similar thefts in Medchal, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Ongole.