Rs 3.6-crore robbery on Pune-Solapur highway, 6 held

Pune rural police have arrested six persons in connection with the sensational robbery of Rs 3.6 crores near Indapur on the Pune-Solapur highway.

Bhaveshkumar Patel, a resident of Mumbai and native of Gujarat, had filed an FIR at the Indapur police station on August 26.

Police said Patel and his aide Vijaybhai Solanki, who are Angadias (part of a private courier service system), were going towards Pune on a four-wheeler with the money. Around 2.30 am, the vehicles slowed down at a speed breaker at Varkute Budruk village in Indapur taluka on the Pune-Solapur highway.

Here, six armed men on two other four-wheelers started chasing the Angadias. The robbers fired bullets and then intercepted the car carrying the money. The robbers then allegedly thrashed Patel and Solanki before looting cash worth Rs 3.6 crores and two cell phones.

Abhinav Deshmukh, superintendent of Pune Rural Police, formed three teams of local crime branch headed by senior inspector Ashok Shelke and three teams of Indapur police station headed by inspector Prabhakar More, for locating the robbers.

Based on clues obtained during the probe, the sleuths arrested three persons identified as Sagar Shivaji Honmane (34), Balu alias Jyotiram Kadam (32) of Kurduwadi in Solapur district and Rajat Abu Mulani (24) of Indapur. The police recovered cash worth Rs 72 lakh from Honmane and Rs 71.2 lakh from Mulani.