Police nabbed Chaddi Gang founder

In a major breakthrough, the Rachakonda Police nabbed the elusive founder and chief of ‘Chaddi Gang’, the Gujarat-based thief outfit, known for moving around at night in their innerwear and pulling off burglaries without hesitating to attack anyone who tried to resist them.According to Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh M Bhagwat, the gang leader, Rama Badiya Parmar, 47, was arrested by a Special Operations Team of the Rachakonda Police, exactly two weeks after they had nabbed three members of the gang from the outskirts of the city at Adibatla.

The trio nabbed on August 1 were involved in 29 cases registered in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, with the police recovering 100 grams of gold ornaments, one kg of silver and Rs 3,000, altogether worth Rs.3.5 lakh from them. At the same time, four members of the gang, including Rama Badiya, had gone absconding.

It was then that the Special Operations Team, led by Inspector T Ravi Kumar, again headed to the Chaddi Gang’s hometown in Dahod of Gujarat, where earlier teams had installed an informant network to keep a tab on the movements of the gang, which included members of 35 families and usually operated in groups of 12 to 15 members.

The Dahod police, led by Superintendent of Police Hitesh Joyssar, also joined the mission, and on August 10, the Rachakonda SOT managed to nab Rama Badiya, from whom 300g of gold, 500g of silver, all worth Rs 10 lakh were seized.

Badiya was produced before court in Dahod and brought to Hyderabad on transit warrant to be produced before the II Metropolitan Magistrate at LB Nagar here.

Bhagwat said three more persons — Khaju Mavoji, Parmar Megzi and Parmar Sanjay — were still absconding.

How Rachakonda Police did it

The Chaddi Gang, who had triggered panic among the public with a series of burglaries on the city outskirts, were on the police radar for the last six months.The Rachakonda police deployed a 12-member team that visited five States – Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat – before tracking down the gang to Dahod. The team then mounted physical and technical surveillance on the suspects, and after building a local network to keep a watch on their movements, had returned to the city. It was based on inputs from this network that three persons were nabbed on August 1, and again, how Rama Badiya was nabbed now.

According to Bhagwat, the gangs had been in operation for the last 15 years and were known to apply oil on their body to ensure that they escape even if they are caught. They targeted houses during festive seasons when people are away. CCTV footage from the areas of the offence had played a key role in identifying the gang, he said.