Eight people, including an expelled Congress leader, were arrested after which the Raigarh police claimed to have busted an inter-state gang of armed robbers who had allegedly planned to rob a cash van of the State Bank of India (SBI) in Mahasamund district.
Those arrested have been identified as Dolchand Patel (31), zilla panchayat member in Mahasamund Bharat Das Mahant (23), Prakash Das Mahant (23) from Janjgir Champa, besides five others namely Akshat Singh (20), Neeraj Rai (19), Sashiraj Rai (19), Rohit Pandey (19) and Sunil Rai (19) from Bihar, Raigarh's Superintendent of Police Rahul Bhagat told reporters on Tuesday.
Three stolen four-wheelers, including two vehicles, four pistols, live cartridges, five mobile phones and cash worth Rs 10,200 were recovered from their possession, the SP said.
Based on a tip-off, they were nabbed from Saraipali Road on Monday evening when they had gathered there to allegedly rob a rural bank in the region, he said.
According to the officer, they had also planned to loot the SBI's cash van between Jagdishpur and Pirda on the Chhattisgarh-Odisha border in Mahasamund. Patel, who is a zilla panchayat member in Mahasamund and a Congressman, is alleged to be the mastermind of the gang, he said.
However, Patel was expelled from the party last year when his name surfaced in a kidnapping case, he said. A case has been registered against all the eight in this connection, the officer said, adding they were produced before a local court which sent them to 14 days of judicial remand.
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