Hijacked ITC cigarettes of Rs one crore recovered in Bihar

Patna, Nov 6 (UNI) In a swift operation, Bihar police here tonight recovered stolen branded cigarettes of a Kolkata-based company, valued at about Rs one crore, from an inter-state gang of robbers and arrested seven of its members.

They also recovered the abandoned truck carrying the cigarettes from a deserted place in Muzaffarpur town, about 60 km away.

Patna police SP Anwar Hussain told UNI that acting on a tip-off, a special team of Bihar police under the guise of customers approached some of the gang members for a deal for the purchase of several cartons of cigarettes here this evening.

After the deal was struck, when the five gang members presented several cartons of cigarettes before the police team, they were immediately arrested by the plain clothesmen, who also seized the cigarettes.

Following their interrogation, police arrested two more members of the gang with about 300 cartons of cigarettes from Lalganj area in neighbouring Vaishali district.

Later, the abandoned truck was also recovered from a deserted place at Kanti in Muzaffarpur district, Mr Hussain said.

He said the truck carrying a consignment of cigarettes worth about Rs one crore from Kolkata-based ITC was on its way to Tirupati when it was hijacked near here a few days ago after it had left Kolkata on October 23.

Mr Hussain said the gang members had already sold out cigarettes worth more than Rs one lakh to different customers in Gaya district.

Efforts were on to identify and nab these customers, the SP said and hoped the kingpin and other members of the gang would also be arrested soon.

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