PUNE: After keeping a low profile for three years, armed robbers who created terror by laying huge stones on the six-lane prestigious Mumbai-Pune Expressway forcing drivers to halt their vehicles and then robbing them of their valuables and money, have once again become active.
People using this popular expressway, pay a heavy toll tax and expect more security, which is missing. The Congress party-led Democratic Front government had drawn a lot of flak a few years ago when there was a spate of robberies on the expressway.
Three years ago when there were several cases of robberies on the expressway, followed by hue and cry in the media, the rural police in Pune had somehow managed to curb the crime by arresting a gang of robbers residing near the highway.
The Mumbai-Pune Expressway is a very busy and highly sensitive route as ministers, politicians, businessmen and other important people prefer to cruise through it in two hours from Mumbai to Pune instead of flying by air to Mumbai and back, which takes more time.
But now within a fortnight armed robbers have once again become active. In the second such incident within a fortnight on the expressway, armed robbers struck at a truck and then a tempo near Valvan bridge near Lonavla and robbed the drivers and passengers of their belongings, which has created panic and fear.
The stretch near Valvan on the expressway is becoming a prey area for the robbers with the police formulating a plan to nab them and to intensify security at the spot. “The plan is in place and we will soon nab culprits,” Ravindra Kadam, District Superintendent of Police, Pune Rural, said.
