Just four days after release from jail on bail, a ‘professional thief’ has been arrested by the members of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) again for theft at the house of a police couple in the capital.
Md. Khairul Islam, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Shajahanpur police station, confirmed the matter on Tuesday night.
Md. Shahadat, 32, a professional thief, lives at house in the capital's Shantibag area. He is also a drug addict. He is the son of one Ahmed Ali of Purba Delbhog village in Srinagar upazila of Munshiganj district. On September 12, Shahadat and his accomplices in broad day light stole a monitor used in CCTV and Tk 25,000 in cash from the house of businessman Mohammad Rahmat Ullah at West Shantibag under Shahjahanpur police station. Shahadat also stole Tk 7,000 from one Yunus’s house in the same area the same day.
Describing the incident, Rahmat said, "After such a daring theft, I checked the CCTV footage of the house and saw Shahadat entered my house by breaking the door handle and stole belongings worth Tk 32,000."
OC Md Khairul Islam said that after identifying the thief by checking the CCTV footage, a police team arrested Shahadat in the city.
Rahmat filed a case under Section 454/380 of the Penal Code with Shahjahanpur Police Station accusing Shahadat of the theft the following day on September 13.
Shahadat was shown arrested in the case and was produced before a Dhaka court on September 14. He was later sent to jail on court coder.
Another incident of theft happened on October 19 at a rented flat of a young police couple in the capital.
Zubair Hossain Alok and his wife Khadija Afrin Lavoni lives at a rented house in the city’s North Shahjanpur area. They police couple are working with the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit of DMP.
The thief stole a gold earrings, a necklace and Tk 11,000 in cash kept in a clay bank.
After the incident, another theft case was lodged with Shahjanpur Police Station on September 19 against unknown persons.
OC Khairul said, “after analyzing the CCTV footage of the neighboring houses, we saw that the thief seemed familiar. In the meantime, with the help of our sources, thief Shahadat was identified and arrested again.
“We also recovered stolen gold ornaments from a gold shop at Mouchak Market on October 21. arrested the businessman for illegally buying stolen ornaments, he added.
Shahadat was earlier arrested in another theft case on September 13 and went to jail. But he was released on bail within a few days. Shahadat is also accused in three drug cases, two theft cases and many other charges in different police station, said OC Khairul.
When the police went to investigate the incident, they found evidence that Shahadat, who was arrested in a previous theft case and sent to jail last month, had stolen from the house of the police couple just four days after his release from jail.
OC Khairul Islam told this correspondent that that during the initial interrogation, the arrested thief admitted that he had been granted bail in a previous theft case just four days ago.
The thief claimed that he had to spend a lot of money to get bail quickly, and stole again to collect the money.
OC Khairul also said that due to the increase in theft incidents in my area, police patrol have been increased.
But if thieves are released so quickly on bail, it will be a big problem for the police to control law and order situation, he added.
"My force has to be busy working to prevent theft. But we also have to provide other services to the people," he added.
