Series of robbery: Gang of three held

Manama : A gang of thieves, accused of performing a number of crimes riding a car rented using a stolen driving licence, were arrested yesterday. 

The three-member gang,  according to police records, were caught from the Northern Governorate after they managed to rob a couple of supermarkets. The gang member used a sedan car rented using the stolen licence. 

The car was the first clue towards catching the suspects as it was seen in the crime scene CCTV footage.  

Investigations later revealed that they were also behind a number of thefts reported in supermarkets at Hamala and Hamad town. 

“The first robbery case was reported from a supermarket in Hamala. Close on the heels of this, another robbery occurred in a mini-mart in Hamad Town. From the CCTV footages, the police made out that the car used by the culprits had been rented from a local car rental,”  a report in the Interior Ministry’s publication Al Amn stated. 

“A sticker on the car was a vital clue. Besides, the first digit of the car number was also visible,” the report stated.

 After intense investigations, it was revealed that a vehicle with the same specifications was rented by a Bahraini youth. But the police found that the driver’s licence used to rent the car had been stolen from a dental clinic in Manama. In fact, the licence belonged to a Bahraini man, who had kept it in at the clinic in lieu of a payment he was supposed to make. The licence was stolen a year ago and the thieves had used it to commit several other crimes as well. 

The car was found several days after near a private swimming pool. Several tools to break open locks of shops and houses were found inside the car. An electronic payment machine, which the thieves might have stolen from a supermarket, was also found nearby.