A long-planned heist
Rapid Action Battalion yesterday claimed to have arrested five members of a gang who robbed Tk 80 lakh from a vehicle in Gazipur recently.
The robbers allegedly snatched the money from a microbus of Incredible Fashion Ltd in broad daylight after shooting its employees on June 7, said Sarwar-Bin-Quasem, director of legal and media wing of Rab headquarters.
The arrestees are identified as Md Riaz, 36, Md Sagor Mahmud, 40, Md Jalil, 40, Ismail Hossain Mamun, 45, and Monoronjon Mondol alias Babu, 41.
Rab arrested the five from different areas of the capital on Saturday, and recovered Tk 30.68 lakh, 1,100 US dollars, a car, three motorbikes used for robbery, one firearm, 21 rounds of bullets, three passports and 38 cell phones from their possessions, said the legal wing director.
Before conducting a robbery, the gang members first worked as employee of the targeted factory, to observe financial transactions and security loopholes closely.
Before joining work, they first learned which factory pays salary in cash to employees and security guards do not use arms, said Sarwar-Bin-Quasem while addressing a briefing at Rab media centre in Karwan Bazar.
He said arrestees Mamun and Babu conducted field survey on garment factories in Gazipur, Ashulia and Kaliakoir area four to five months back, to know security arrangements there.
Then they chose Incredible Fashions, as it pays wages in cash and had no armed security guards to carry cash from bank to factory, said Sarwar, adding that Babu then joined the factory as sub-contractor's assistant in the second week of March, and started collecting information from factory workers, guards and nearby shops.
He said the arrestees in primary interrogation informed the elite force that their plans to loot money were foiled in April and May, as the factory used mobile banking service to pay employees.
Later, they targeted June to conduct robbery, as the factory decided to pay cash and other gang members conducted recce in the vicinity of the factory, to execute the plan for 12 to 15 days, said the director, quoting arrestees.
On the day of incident, the arrestees stopped the factory microbus near the Bangabandhu Hi-Tech City area of Kaliakoir while it was returning from a bank with cash, looted the money at gunpoint, and disappeared from the scene within five minutes, said Sarwar.
The factory's general manager Md Khorshed Alam filed a case with Kaliakoir Police Station, accusing unidentified persons.
The arrestees had a number of cases filed against them with different police stations in Dhaka and Barishal, he said.
"We are now conducting drives to arrest the absconding members of the gang," he added.
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