4 held in city, Gazipur

Mohammadpur police yesterday arrested four people belonging to an auto-rickshaw lifting syndicate in the city and Gazipur in two separate drives.
Abdur Razzak, 30, was held in Mirpur and Abdullah, 18, Rafiqul Islam, 23, and Md Roni, 23, in Kaliakoir, Gazipur.
Police said Razzak leads a gang of 10 men who in disguise of passengers steal auto-rickshaws by making the drivers unconscious by serving them sedative-mixed juice.
The arrestees, as quoted by police, said they rent auto-rickshaws for long distance to get intimate with the driver during the journey and feed them the sedative juices.
Anowar Hossain, sub-inspector of Mohammadpur Police Station, who led the drive, said Abdullah, Rafiqul, and Roni run a workshop in Kaliakoir and buy the lifted vehicles.
At the workshop the three do some modifications to the auto-rickshaws and then sell them, said Anowar.
The three men buy auto-rickshaws from 5-7 auto-rickshaw lifting gangs, who are active in the city.
Razzak, during primary interrogation, said they sell each lifted vehicle at Tk 40 thousand, and after modification the second party sell them at Tk 2-3 lakh.
The lifters also make fake documents and change number plates to camouflage them from the law enforcers' eyes.
Police seized such a modified auto-rickshaw from the Kaliakoir workshop and three meters of the auto-rickshaws already sold. The arrested four informed police that they had lifted around 12 vehicles last month.