The
Niger State Police Command has arrested a six-man gang for robbing houses
disguised as Muslim women.
It
was gathered that one of the tactics of the gang was for one of the gang
members to don a hijab in order to observe the house which they intended to
rob.
A
police source said that the surveillance was done to know
when the occupants would leave and come back home before carrying out the
operation.
Armed
with this information, the source said, the gang would dispatch the gang member
dressed in hijab to the residence.
The
‘woman’ would force the door open and later invite other members of the gang to
the place after which they would remove all movable property in the house.
A
competent source close to the Niger State Police command in Minna said that the
syndicate was apprehended last week after members of the gang entered a house
in the Dutsen Kura area of the state capital.
It
was gathered that a policeman, who was attached to one of the places of worship
close to the house that the suspects broke into, observed the unusual movement
of a “woman” around the premises and later saw the accomplices coming around
for their operation.
The
policeman was said to have got assistance from some Good Samaritans, leading to
the arrest of the ‘woman’ but not before ‘she’ attempted to escape scaling the
fence of the building.
When
contacted, the Police Spokesman, Bala Elikana, confirmed the story, saying the
Force had been able to recover some of the items stolen from the house during
the last operation and those carried out before then.
According
to Elikana, among the household goods recovered from the suspects were pedestal
fans, electric cookers, stoves, washing machines and electric irons.
The
police spokesman warned members of the public to desist from keeping the keys
to their houses within the reach of criminals, saying such acts aided the
operations of the suspects long before they were arrested.
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