From investigator to suspect: Railway police officer probing ₹1.44-cr train gold heist held

ON nov 21, a rider stepped away a rail at Howrah, igniter by gold biscuits worth ₹1.44 crore that he had left with 14 hours ago. The men who took it allegedly wore police uniforms, he told the authorities. Initially, the case seemed routine – one of thousands of robberies that unfortunately blight the railways in India.A month on, however, investigators have arrested the man who was supposed to be in charge of solving the crime, the station house officer of the GRP police station.Rajesh Kumar Singh’s arrest has turned the robbery on its head, recasting it from a case of rogue constables to what officers now say was a carefully coordinated operation involving policemen and civilian insiders.On November 20, Kolkata-based gold trader Manoj Soni asked his staffer Dhananjay Shashwat to carry the gold biscuits and handover to another Jaipur-based trader. Shashwat boarded the Howrah-Bikaner-Jodhpur Express at 11.30 PM on November 20. At Gaya junction, roughlyfive-and-a-half-hour into the journey, four men dressed as police constables boarded the 3-AC coach and two of them allegedly sat next to Shashwat, questioning him about the gold.“Somewhere between Koderma and Gaya, the cops pulled the chain and got down with Shashwat. They all travelled by autorickshaw and later by Bolero Jeep to reach Manpur in Gaya at the water bottling plant,” Shashwat said in his complaintwhich HT has seen.Shashwat told police that a goldsmith was already present at Manpur with another person and after examining gold, it was broken into pieces. “Then Shashwat was brought back to Gaya Junction and sent to Howrah in another train,” he added.Shashwat reached Howrah on November 21 and told Soni about the robbery the same day. The first information report was registered at Malipanchgora police station in Howrah under BNS Section 227 and 229 (giving false evidence), 318 (cheating) and others.For days, the focus remained on the four constables, who were unidentified initially. They were suspended and soon went missing. Two civilians — Parvez Alam and former GRP driver Sitaram — were also identified as part of the plot.Then, doubts crept in.Soni refused to accept Shashwat’s account at face value. He filed a complaint, alleging that his staffer himself may have been complicit. As Shashwat repeated his statement to police, Soni escalated the matter to senior railway police officers. Still, there was little visible movement. The constables were named on December 30.Soni got another complaint lodged with the railway SP on November 27 in Patna, who forwarded it to Gaya rail police for further action on November 28. Seven days after the robbery, Soni approached Rajesh Verma, the MP from Khagaria. Shortly after, a special investigation team was formed.That is when the story began to unravel.“The arrests came after technical evidence, call detail records, tower location and other investigations revealed their involvement. The SIT constituted on the instructions of the Railway SP started a layer-by-layer investigation into the entire case,” said an official familiar with the matter, requesting anonymity.On Wednesday, Rajesh Singh was summoned to Patna and questioned for nearly eight hours. By evening, he was under arrest. He was later produced before a railway judicial magistrate and remanded to judicial custody in Gaya.Investigators say that as the probe tightened, Singh and the four suspended constables –now identified asKaran Kumar, Abhishek Chaturvedi, Ranjay Kumar and Anand Mohan -- allegedly approached Soni on December 12 with an offer: The gold biscuits would be returned. But Soni did not accept the proposal.Police now believe Alam had provided the input about Shashwat carrying gold to the accused. “We don’t know how Alam got the information as he is yet to be arrested,” the officer said.A second police officer aware of the investigation said that Shashwat’s claim was verified in the investigation, which also showed that Alam had provided the specific input about him carrying “large amounts of gold.” To be sure, Shashwat is yet to be cleared of suspicion.The list of suspects continues to grow. Police are searching for the goldsmith who allegedly broke the biscuits and the driver of the Bolero jeep used to transport the group. Senior officers are also examining why the Gaya Rail deputy superintendent of police did not visit the spot or supervise the case even weeks after the complaint was filed.“More heads are set to roll in the case, as the Gaya Rail DSP’s laxity has also come into light. The DSP did not even visit the spot or supervise the case even a month after the complaint was received, said the second police officer on condition of anonymity.Rail superintendent of police Enamul Haq Mangnoo said that the investigation so far has found complicity of seven persons. “The SHO had lodged a case against four unidentified constables and also named Shashwat under section 309(4) of the BNS, but now seeing the gravity it has been converted into Prevention of Corruption Act and multiple sections of BNS. Now a DSP-rank officer Bhaskar Ranjan will investigate the case, while the arrested SHO’s track record will be examined thoroughly,” he added.Behind the immediate arrests lies a larger question investigators are now asking: Whether this was an isolated crime, or part of a wider crime nexus operating along the Grand Chord Line — a busy corridor known for the movement of high-value metals by train. “These golds are usually brought from north-eastern states and other Asian countries and transported to different destinations by train from Howrah to avoid taxes,” said a senior police official requesting anonymity.Repeated phone calls to Soni did not receive a response.