It was planned down to the last detail. First, a gang of 11 people from Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut would dispatch two-wheelers to Keralam by train. Then, they would fly down to Kochi and Kannur, and steal copper cables from buildings and abandoned BSNL cable terminal boxes.

It was going well, and the gang even allegedly bagged Rs 12,000 worth of loot. Then, the police swept in and arrested all of them.

On Monday, Kannur City Police Commissioner B V Vijaya Bharath Reddy said they had made the arrests after an alert from the Thrissur City Police.

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“We have nabbed five of the gang, who had landed at Kannur airport from Delhi on September 19. They had already sent their bikes to Kannur on September 9. Our patrolling team on Sunday night spotted a five-member gang under suspicious circumstances and found they had concealed cable cutters on their bodies. Upon questioning them, we found the gang had reached Kannur with the intention of robbery,” the commissioner said, adding that the others were arrested for Thrissur.

The officer said that upon questioning the arrested gang, it was found that their target was to steal copper cables in abandoned BSNL cable terminals.

With BSNL having shifted its network from copper to optical fibre, surplus copper cables have become a valuable but non-utilisable resource for the telecom company, which has been moving to recover and auction such cables. The metal also has a significant scrap value, making abandoned cable networks an attractive target for thieves.

“The two-wheelers sent by rail were to help move around,” said the officer.

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Police have registered a case of robbery. Sections of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act and the Telecommunications Act have also been invoked.

The gang was first spotted in Thrissur on the morning of September 20.

“Four people were spotted near a BSNL cable terminal box on Sunday morning wearing the yellow safety helmets that construction workers use. While they didn’t draw suspicion initially, locals began to take notice when workers started filling bags with copper cables, eventually alerting the police. When we went there, they tried to escape, but we nabbed all of them,” said a police officer.

According to the FIR registered in Thrissur, by the time they were caught, the gang had removed cables worth Rs 12,000 and badly damaged the cable network.

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Thrissur Police later found that six members of the gang had flown to Kochi on September 19, of whom four had come to Thrissur. They had allegedly also dispatched bikes to Kerala before boarding the flight from Delhi.

The remaining were arrested from under the Kalamassery police limits in Kochi city following a tip-off from Thrissur.

“Upon questioning them, we realised they were targeting buildings and BSNL terminal boxes for copper cables. They planned to steal the costly cables, dispose of them in Keralam and fly back to UP. In between, they would stay at hotels. We have handed them over to Thrissur police,” one officer in Kochi said.