It was a con straight out of a movie. A husband and wife who discovered an easy way to make quick money, a months-long investigation, a city-wide manhunt and a clandestine camp-out. Finally, the culprits — 30-year-old Sikandar and 29-year-old Nazma — were caught. Their crime? Stealing and selling nearly Rs 20 lakh worth of batteries from Bengaluru’s traffic signals.
It was late one night in June 2021 when Sikandar had seen the box of a traffic signal wide open, and he had reportedly grabbed three batteries from them, and rode away on his scooter. The next day, he had sold the batteries weighing 54 kilogram for Rs 75 per kilogram, according to reports. After he informed his wife Nazma (29) ‘how easy’ it was to steal batteries from traffic signals as the padlocks in the boxes were weak, his wife joined him.
Nazma suggested that by disconnecting their scooter’s tail lamp and switching off the headlight, they could ensure CCTV cameras couldn’t capture their licence plate as they went about stealing the batteries. “But there was another problem. There were many checkpoints in the city due to the night curfew. Nazma said she would accompany me since police would accompany me since police wouldn’t frisk a woman carrying a vegetable bag,” Sikandar said.
Sikandar and Nazma stole more than 230 batteries, each weighing 18 kilograms, from 68 traffic junctions across Bengaluru between June 2021 and January 2022. The couple, who are residents of Chikkabanawar, would ride through the streets in the wee hours on their scooter, and burgled traffic signal batteries.
A police officer told Indian Express, “Batteries started going missing from traffic signals a few months ago. The disappearance of batteries became almost a daily affair. The police team scanned footage from over 300 CCTV cameras while probing the crime”. The team had spotted the couple in a piece of footage, who were moving around between 3 am and 5 am on their scooter in a suspicious manner, but the details were unclear as the scooter’s tail lamp was disconnected.
Then, the police collected details of 4,000 scooters of similar make from the Regional Transport Office (RTO) and questioned over 300 people in the process. They even camped at the Goraguntepalya junction for a few days, after finding that the couple had moved towards that location. Finally, the couple were nabbed on February 9. It was found that they did not use their mobile phones during the crime. The police also found that the batteries were sold to one Dhanashekar, a shopkeeper in Ashok Nagar, at a very low cost. The stolen batteries have been put to use in four-wheelers and in factories.
Earlier, Sikandar reportedly used to run a tea shop in Bengaluru, but had to shut it down during the lockdown. Later, he started selling tea on his scooter, but was allegedly harassed by the traffic police on a number of occasions. On one occasion, officials also allegedly broke his flask. This may have prompted Sikandar to start stealing the batteries, the Indian Express report stated.
(With IANS inputs)