Two electrocuted while attempting to steal cables from power tower in Beed

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: Two men were electrocuted after allegedly cutting cable wires from a high-voltage power transmission tower, and were later crushed when the heavy structure collapsed on them in Beed's Kaij taluka on Saturday night, the police said.The police said the two men were part of a six-member gang — some of whom are from Pune district — involved in a dacoity attempt. The Kaij police have registered an FIR under BNS section 310.According to investigators, the remaining four accomplices tried to cover up the incident by transporting the two bodies in a four-wheeler to two different hospitals and falsely claiming that the victims had died in a road accident. The accused first took the bodies to a hospital in Ambajogai of Beed. They later carried them nearly 130 km away to a private hospital in the Nanalpeth police station limits in Parbhani.Doctors at the Parbhani hospital, however, grew suspicious after examining the nature of injuries, which were inconsistent with a road accident, and alerted the police, treating the case as medico-legal. During preliminary interaction, one of the accomplices partially disclosed to the doctor that the victims had come in contact with an electric pole and suffered a fatal shock in Kaij.Suraj Gunjal, the Parbhani additional superintendent of police, said the men panicked when questioned by the police team about the sequence of events. "They kept giving evasive answers and later fled the hospital premises," he said.Parbhani police subsequently alerted their counterparts in Kaij about the suspicious deaths. Acting on the inputs, the Kaij police began investigating the case and visited multiple locations indicated by the suspects as the site of the alleged accident.Inspector Swapnil Unawane, of the Kaij police station, said that even before receiving information from Parbhani, they had detained two suspects from Naholi village after locals caught them on suspicion of theft. "During questioning, they revealed that the deceased were their accomplices. The actual spot of the incident is around 5km from Naholi village," he said.A police team on Sunday inspected the high-voltage transmission tower where the electrocutions were believed to have occurred. Investigators suspected that the gang was attempting to steal valuable cable wires when the accident took place.Three accused — Ashok Gaikwad (24), a resident of Patraud who currently stays at Anandgaon in Beed's Majalgaon taluka, Vaijnath Kadam (20), from Kothrud in Majalgaon taluka, and Suraj Giram (21) from Mednarkarwadi in Pune, have been arrested so far.The police said a search is underway to trace the remaining four to five accused who fled after abandoning the bodies. Further investigation is in progress to establish the full sequence of events and the extent of the gang's involvement in similar thefts.