The Delhi Police has arrested two men, including a habitual offender, for allegedly stealing around 1,200 metres of copper cable worth Rs 15 lakh from an under-construction metro site in central Delhi’s Sadar Bazaar area, an official said on Sunday.
Police said the accused loaded the cable onto a truck and fled on the intervening night of November 2 and 3. The complainant, Dev Singh, a supervisor with the construction firm, filed an e-FIR after discovering the material missing.
“During the investigation, police scanned nearly 50 CCTV cameras from the site and adjoining areas. Footage showed two men loading the stolen cable onto a truck. One of them was identified as Randhir Singh, a crane operator at the site,” the officer said.
Based on technical surveillance, Singh’s mobile location was traced to his native village in Amritsar. A police team conducted a raid there on November 8 and caught him, he said, adding that Singh (29) had been previously involved in four criminal cases, including those over a murder in Ludhiana and an ATM theft in Rajasthan’s Udaipur.
During interrogation, Singh allegedly disclosed the involvement of his co-worker Pankaj Kumar, who worked as a labourer and helped facilitate entry at night.
Kumar (29), a native of Bihar, was arrested from the construction site on November 10, the police said.
According to the official, Singh, a drug addict, was under financial stress and believed the cable theft would not be noticed immediately due to limited CCTV recording.
“He hid the stolen material at a house in Bhalswa Dairy,” the officer said, adding that the entire stolen copper cable had been recovered.
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