A gang of five members was arrested for looting temples in the isolated areas of Mysuru and Chamarajanagar districts of Karnataka. They took the help of Google maps to steal valuables worth Rs 2.9 lakh since September last year. The accused men, who are in the age group of 19-26, are not full-time burglars. They come from different professional backgrounds.
The police identified a peculiar similarity in all the reported temple robberies. Dharmendra Kumar Meena, Superintendent of Police, Chamarajanagar, while speaking to The Times of India, said that they were getting many complaints of temple robberies with a similar modus operandi. All the burgled temples were situated in the deserted areas of the district.
Reportedly, the five men had come together to conduct the robberies. A special investigation team was made to nab the accused gang. The SP said that the five-member gang had burgled nine temples in Chamarajanagar and two in Mysuru in the last five months.
During interrogation, it was revealed that the gang would look online for temples in deserted areas of the district. Since there was no festival or special occasion that would attract people to come to the temples, there were not many visitors. Hence, it was an easy task for the youths to loot the temples which were located in remote areas. When an online search for the location of these looted temples was done, the police realised that the route information was accurate. The men would also gather information about the demography of the locality.
