In a significant breakthrough, the Agartala city police on Wednesday managed to arrest a gang of 12 thieves and recovered huge quantities of stolen items under their possessions.

Giving details of the operation, SP (West Tripura) Kiran Kumar K said that the headmaster of Ramakrishna Vivekananda English Medium School of Agartala on Tuesday registered a complaint before the East Agartala police station that during festival holidays of the school, a total 47 ceiling fans were missing from class rooms.

Based on the complaint, separate police teams has been formed and within one day of the complaint, police managed to arrest the kingpin of the thieves gang from Hanging Bridge area of the city, who is also running a scrap item store at Lal Mathi area near MG Bazar, said Kumar.

Based on the interrogation statement of arrested gang leader, the city police on Wednesday managed to arrest 11 more thieves involved with various stolen incidents including robbery at Ramakrishna Vivekananda English Medium School, said Kumar and added that police has recovered a total of 41 ceiling fans along with many batteries used in ATM and other copper items from the scrap shop.

He said that all the arrested thieves will be produced before a local court with police remand appeals for further interrogation.

The SP said that arrested thieves are residents of outer parts of the city and they daily gathered in the town to commit robbery. He also said that a police investigation is going to arrest other thieves involved with gang.  He added that the number of stolen incidents has decreased in the city during the past few months and police patrolling at night time has increased at its multifold.