Police seize 227 stolen motorbikes
Police have over the last couple of days recovered around 227 'stolen' motorbikes from different parts of the country and detained fifteen alleged bike muggers and thieves.
Of the 227 motorbikes, 215 were seized from four motor-bike go-downs in Satkhira, namely Sarder Trading, A One Motor, Honda Bazaar and BML.
Md Salahuddin Khan, officer-in-charge of Mirpur Model Police Station, revealed this at a press conference yesterday.
Though police said all the motorbikes seized were either mugged or stolen from different parts of the country, a number of the vehicles appeared brand new - some were even wrapped in polythene.
Asaduzzaman Babu, chairman of the Satkhira Sadar upazila, has meanwhile claimed that about 80 percent of the motor-bikes seized by police from the four go-downs have legal papers and legal owners.
"Many of the motor-bikes in the go-downs belong to people who want to sell their motorbikes in the second-hand motor bike haat (rural market) held every Friday in the upazila," he said. He complained that police did not wait long enough to check the papers before seizing the bikes.
A source in Satkhira said that some of the seized motorbikes had been smuggled in from India, explaining why some bikes were brand new.
The OC told the press, "A police patrol team Delta 71, acting on a tip-off on Sunday at around 10:00 am, arrested Sadek alias Akbar while he was mugging a motorbike."
Based on information from Sadek, police carried out further drives in Ashulia and different areas of Manikganj, Faridpur and Jessore, arresting another motor-bike thief and mugger Ashikur Rahman, 30.
With information obtained from Ashikur, police raided different places in Satkhira upazila and arrested other alleged members of motor-bike mugging and stealing gang.
The arrestees from Satkhira are: Mostafiz, 38, Fazlul Karim, 21, Sarfa Dalal, 40, Maruf Billa, 20, Monira Parvin, 22, Mir Arifuzzaman Bhanu, 40, Nur Mohammad Foton, 27, Shahjahan Sheikh, 20, Tariqul Islam, 32, Harun-ur-Rashid, 28, Mokbul Hossain, 45, Wahiduzzaman Bappi, 42, and Anwar Hossain, 55.
The OC said the motor-bike muggers and thieves work in four stages - one group steals or mugs the vehicles, another distributes them to different motor-bike go-downs, another 'produces' fake documents for the stolen bikes and the last group eventually sells them.
Since yesterday afternoon, around 100 people came to Mirpur police station where the motor-bikes were displayed to identify their stolen or mugged vehicles. However, only a few found their bikes. Most of them had difficulty matching the chassis numbers of their vehicles with those of the stolen ones.
Martin S Paul, whose motor-bike was stolen from Mirpur Section-6 on June 27, said although his chassis number matched with a stolen one, the colour and other parts of the vehicles were different.
Meanwhile, our Chandpur correspondent reports that Chandpur police have arrested 10 alleged motorbike thieves and recovered two motorbikes on Monday night from Shaheed Muktijoddha road. A case was filed in this regard with Chandpur police station.
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