GHAZIABAD: Four houses inside a gated residential society in Ghaziabad were burgled on the night of November 9 when their occupants were out of town during extended holidays last week.The series of burglaries took place in Seemant Vihar housing society, located behind Radisson Blu Hotel in Kaushambi area.Preliminary investigations have revealed that CCTV cameras installed on the premises by the RWA were defunct when the burglaries took place. An FIR was registered at Indirapuram police station on Saturday night.Two of the houses burgled — a duplex apartment and a second-floor two-bedroom flat — belong to Dr Deepak Gupta, who is associated with Safdarjang Hospital in Delhi.Dr Gupta had rented out his flat to one Atul Dubey, an executive with a Gurgaon MNC dealing in electronic goods. Apart from these two houses, two more flats were burgled in the society. One of these flats on the first floor is occupied by a one Naresh Katoch, who is out of town. His wife had locked the flat and left for a relative’s house.The other flat is occupied by Debabrata Mishra, who had gone with his family to meet relatives in Odisha. According to the RWA, the theft was discovered by Mishra when he reached his flat around 4am on November 10 and found the lights on.Dubey (40) said he and his family had left Ghaziabad on the evening of November 6 to celebrate Diwali in his ancestral house in Kannauj. “Dr Gupta was in Lucknow last week. He called me around 9.30am on November 10 saying thieves had broken into my flat and his duplex apartment. He had been informed about the theft by neighbours. I reached Kaushambi around 6pm, almost an hour after Dr Gupta had come from Lucknow. Police had already visited our premises during the day. We went to the police station and learnt that two more houses in the society have been burgled. The thieves decamped with cash and jewellery , but left other goods behind,” Dubey said.Police said forensic teams had collected fingerprints, which will be matched with those of criminals active in Kaushambi area. The house owners suspect the burglaries could have been committed by scrap collectors or suppliers of bottled-water to the society.“It is clear that the burglaries took place only after a proper recce. Minor construction and repair work were underway in some of the flats. We information was leaked out by these workers to some gang,” additional superintendent of police Ravi Kumar said.Asked about the defunct CCTV cameras, RWA president Anand Singh Rawat said: “The new RWA took over only in August. We have asked for price quotations to install new cameras. Guards make rounds of the society through the night. It is being investigated if the burglars scaled the boundary wall.”

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