By F M Britto
Raipur, July 3, 2023: Within eleven days of the crime, the Chhattisgarh police have arrested the inter-state looters of money from the Bagbahara presbytery of Raipur archdiocese.
“Because it happened in the place of worship, the police took it very seriously,” Father Varghese Thekkekut, parish priest of St. Theresa of Avila at Bagbahra in Mahasamund district, told Matters India July 3.
After saying the Sunday Mass on June 18, he was reading the newspaper in his room at noon. Three masked men entered his open presbytery and asked to be prayed over.
Then one pointed his pistol at the 69 year-old priest and the other two searched his shelves. After looting 125, 000 ruees, they tied Father Thekkekut’s hands and feet, and locking the door from outside, they had vanished on a scooter.
The smalltown CCTV camera footage had showed the masked trio on a scooter. Under the leadership of the nearby Mahasamund district police official Dharmendra Singh, the police belonging to the Crime Branch, Intelligence Agency and Cyber Cell teamed to nab the criminals.
Singh briefed the media on July 1, that on a clue the police searched for 28-year-old Vakil Ahmed at the neighbouring Khariar Road town of Orissa, 24 km south of Bagbahara. Working there as a clerk to his friend and contractor Shadab Khan, the man from Uttar Pradesh had been staying there for the last five months in a rented house.
The police nabbed him at his house at Panchi village in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh, 1,337 km north of Bagbahra.
Based on his confession, they arrested his 27-year-old accomplish Mohammed Aabid from the same village. It was he who had pointed the pistol at the priest. He had been going around at Khariar Road repairing sewing machines and stoves.
The other companion Vajid from the same village is absconding. He is said to be the master mind.
The criminals had confessed to the police that after they had reached their residence at Khariar Road, they counted the 125, 000 rupees and shared it among themselves. Besides some cash, the police also confiscated from them a country-made pistol, a mobile of the priest and a Jupiter scooter. They had committed similar crimes earlier too, said Singh.
Based on information the priest received plenty of donations on Sunday, the criminals are alleged to have expected to get some 50,000,000 rupees. The police are trying to nab the local informant, Singh said.
While the police have sent both the arrested criminals to police custody, they are searching for the absconding Vajid.
Singh said that the police teams had searched for them in Vishakhapatnam, Delhi and Meerut.
So there was no communal aspect