THE GOAN NETWORK
PORVORIM
A female neighbour was among five persons arrested in a dacoity at Marra-Pilerne, after they allegedly broke into a rented room and robbed gold ornaments and cash worth a combined Rs 24 lakh from a couple at knife point in the wee hours of Monday.
Porvorim police managed to recover a partial portion of the stolen gold ornaments and cash.
According to North Goa SP Rahul Gupta, IPS, the incident took place at about 3:30 am when five armed assailants broke open the latch of the door with an iron rod and threatened Pappu Biswas and his wife at knife point. They robbed gold ornaments worth Rs 15 lakh and cash of Rs 9 lakh from the couple.
An FIR was registered under Sections 310(2), 127 of BNSS, 2023 and different teams were formed to trace the accused persons.
During investigation based on the technical evidence and CCTV footage, the police were able to identify the accused persons, Joyce (Priya) D’Souza (32) of Marra-Pilerne, Kalpana Barki (37) of Chandan wadi, Bastora, Imran Shaikh (34) a native of Pune but residing at Xel-Bastora, Subhash Kumar (27), a native of Uttar Pradesh but residing at Colvale and Dhiraj Gupta (20) of Colvale.
The police arrested the five accused on charges of conspiring and committing the dacoity.
Police investigations revealed that accused person Joyce (Priya) D’Souza is the neighbour of the complainant and was aware of the large amount of cash and the gold in possession of the Biswas couple as she was friendly with them.
Joyce is alleged to have planned the crime along with her friends, Krishna Belgaonkar and Kalpana Barki. Later, Krishna allegedly arranged the remaining accused persons and Kalpana Barki along with her friend Imran arranged a vehicle to commit the crime.
After the crime, the stolen gold and cash were distributed between the accused at a hotel in Calangute.
Incidentally, Joyce was previously involved in a crime registered by the Porvorim Police under Sections 370, 342, 324, 323, 504, 506 r/w 34 IPC and Section 4, 5 and 7 ITP Act. Krishna Belgaonkar was involved in a murder case at Calangute Police Station in 2018 and is presently on bail.
Kalpana Barki was previously involved in a murder case of her own husband at Curchorem in 2018 with the Curchorem Police registering a case under Sections 302, 201, R/w 120-B of IPC.
Porvorim Police managed to recover a portion of the stolen property, the knife used to threaten the victims, the iron rod used to break open the latch and the vehicle used for commission of crime. Additional recovery is underway, police said.
Three more persons have been identified and teams have been dispatched to trace them.
The investigation team was led by the Porvorim police inspector and supervised by Porvorim SDPO Vishwesh Karpe.
