Pune: The Pune Rural police used drones to trace and arrest two criminals with police records who hid in a sugarcane farm near Jejuri and a man for robbing a farmer at gunpoint around 3pm on Saturday at Daundaj village in Purandar taluka.A Jejuri police team led by assistant police inspector Deepak Wakchaure nabbed Lakhandsing Dudhani (35) and Bhehatsingh Kalyani (30), both from Ramtekdi, Hadapsar. “We have also arrested Ratnesh Puri (23), the driver of their rented car,” Wakchaure said.Sub-inspector Sajrerao Pujari of the Jejuri police told said on Saturday afternoon, the duo broke into a house of Anant Kadam, a farmer, at Daundaj village when the farmer and his wife were at the farm and their sons were out. The duo stole jewellery and Rs 20,000 from the house. While they were leaving, one of the sons reached home. “When the accused saw him, they threatened him at a gunpoint. They snatched Rs 3,000 and a gold ring from him as well and drove away in a car parked outside the house,” Pujari said.The officer said the duo threw the firearm and jewellery into a quarry while driving away from the house. “We have recovered the booty which is worth Rs 2.23 lakh collectively,” he said. Pujari said the duo has over 30 cases registered against them. “They were produced before a court on Sunday and remanded to police custody for five days,” Pujari said. “We have recovered a country-made firearm,” he said.After they fled from the house, the farmer’s son had alerted villagers. The youths from the village chased their vehicle. Seeing them, the two left the vehicle near a railway track at Thopatewadi in Nira and fled. “The locals, however, nabbed the driver and handed him to the police,” the officer said.He said the duo entered a sugarcane farm along the Pandharpur road and Jeur. The local villagers surrounded the farm. “We did not allow anyone to enter the farm as they were carrying a firearm,” he said, adding that it was difficult to locate the robbers in the farm and hence we used drones and found the exact location of the duo.He said, “Drone helped us locating them when the duo was changing clothes to escape. “With the help of the locals, we nabbed Dudhani and Kalyani before they could escape,” he said. Pujari said both of them had injuries on their foreheads and were bleeding. “We later found that they inflicted injuries on themselves using toothpicks to avoid arrest. We took them to a hospital and then formally arrested them,” Pujari said.
