Two robbery gangs busted

MUAR: Three gunmen, believed to be a robbery gang active for years in Johor, were shot dead by police near Tanjung Parit Bunga, Muar this morning.
Johor police chief Commissioner Datuk Seri Wan Ahmad Najmuddin Mohd said after receiving a tip-off, a team from Bukit Aman's Special Task Force on Organised Crime (Stafoc) and Johor serious crime investigation (D9) trailed the suspects' vehicle from the Malacca exit of the North-South Expressway to the Alor Gajah-Malacca-Jasin Highway.
He said police intercepted the vehicle at about 9.30am near Parit Bunga and ordered the driver to stop.
"The car did not stop, and several gunshots rang out immediately," he said.
He said police returned fire and shot dead the three suspects.
Police found two pistols in the car, both without serial numbers.
He said police did not find any identification document on the three men, but believe they are a robbery gang that had been active for a decade in Johor.
In KUALA LUMPUR, in just a week after a gang of five robbers grabbed about 10kg of gold jewellery worth about RM1.8 million from a gold wholesale trader near Jalan Masjid India, police managed to solve the case with the arrest of four suspects on Tuesday.
A team of police detectives from the Dang Wangi CID, who were hot on the trail of the suspects, held the men, aged between 20 and 40, in several raids at undisclosed locations in the Klang Valley.
Police recovered part of the stolen loot from the suspects.
Sources said the men had sold a bulk of the jewellery to middlemen and had planned to smelt the rest into gold wafers.
However, they were busted and investigators are trying to trace those who had purchased the stolen gold jewellery from the gang.
It is learnt that police also seized machetes and other weapons from the suspects and are looking for another accomplice who was involved in the heist.
At noon on March 23, a gang of armed robbers confronted the gold trader at a basement parking lot of a building on Jalan Bunus 6 here before grabbing a bag containing the gems.
The robbers escaped in a car which was later found abandoned about two kilometres from the crime scene.
The victim, who is in his 40s, had travelled from Penang a day earlier to deliver the gems to several goldsmith shops at Jalan Masjid India.
He put up at a hotel in the city and set out to make the delivery the next day but lost the gems to the robbers.
Police believe the suspects had trailed the victim from Penang and had monitored his movements throughout his stay here.
Soon after the victim lodged a police report, Dang Wangi police assembled a special team of detectives to trace the whereabouts of the gang.
The detectives managed to gather positive leads into the case which eventually led to the arrest of the suspects.