Nalgonda SP Sharat Chandra Pawar addressing the media on Saturday.
| Photo Credit: By Arrangement
The Nalgonda district police arrested a member of the inter-State gang involved in stealing gold ornaments from passengers on buses stopping at roadside eateries along highways and recovered 600 grams of stolen gold worth about ₹85 lakh from him. The arrest was made after a 15-day operation in Madhya Pradesh using technical surveillance.
The accused, identified as 30-year-old Shah Allah Rakha, a driver from Khalghat village in Dharampuri taluka of Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh, was arrested by special teams of the Nalgonda police. He was apprehended at Umar Bhan Cross Road within the limits of Manawar police station in Madhya Pradesh and brought to Nalgonda district on a transit warrant.
The arrest was following a case reported at Chityal police station on December 5, 2025, when gold ornaments were stolen from a bus while it halted near a roadside eatery on the Hyderabad-Vijayawada National Highway.
The teams used technological and technical analysis to identify the suspects as habitual offenders belonging to Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh. The teams were then deputed to Madhya Pradesh, where they carried out sustained surveillance for 15 days before nabbing the accused.
During the interrogation, Shah Allah Rakha confessed that he, along with his associates Ashraf Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Jabar Khan and Umar Khan, had committed the theft at Chityal and had been targeting buses on highways in Telangana for the past few years. He also disclosed that the gang had carried out similar thefts of cash and gold ornaments from buses halted near hotels on the Vijayawada highway in 2022 and 2023.
Police said the five-member gang were habitual offenders with criminal records in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Sixty tolas of gold ornaments, weighing about 600 grams and valued at around ₹85 lakh, were recovered as intact stolen property from the possession of the arrested accused.
Special teams have been formed to trace the remaining absconding accused and to verify the gang’s involvement in similar cases reported in the past. District SP Sharat Chandra Pawar said that the remaining members of the gang would be arrested soon.
Published – January 10, 2026 07:52 pm IST
