KATHMANDU: Police rounded up eight suspects, who were involved in stealing laptops and purchasing stolen goods, during three separate anti-theft operations carried out in the capital yesterday.

A police team lead by DSP Om Adhikari, deployed from the Metropolitan Police Crime Division, had raided a Shantinagar-based rented room of Ravi Sah, 22, of Biratnagar. Sah, along with Kumar Tej Bahadur Magar aka Kumar Thapa, 32, of Nuwakot, was arrested with 33 Dell laptops that the latter had burgled from Chelsea Education Centre, Tokha.

SP Prakash Adhikari said that Thapa had entered the education centre, run by Micheal J Hess, an American citizen, in the wee hours of June 11 and made off with 37 laptops.

“Thapa stole the laptops, their bags, and chargers. He had stored the stolen goods at Sah’s rented room for sale. Sah had taken the custody of the electronic gadgets despite knowing that they were stolen,” said SP Adhikari informed. Thapa had got a lead to the education centre through his wife who worked as an office assistant at the centre.

“The education centre used to provide duplicate keys to some of its staff, and Thapa’s wife was among them. As his pregnant wife had been resting at Dhapasi-based rented room for the past few days, he took the keys without her knowledge and used them to steal the laptops,” he said.

Thapa is a repeat offender as he was released from jail in 2011 after serving eight years for two separate robberies in Matatirtha and Kirtipur.

Similarly, the MPCD arrested Ram Bahadur Lama, 38, of Kavre, Suman Thapa, 33, of Dolakha, and Tulas Bahadur Shrestha, 42, of Sindhuli for robbing the house of Ritu KC in Dhungedhara.

According to officials, they had made off with an LED television set, a laptop, gold ornaments and Rs 584,000 on May 3 when KC’s family members were living in a makeshift tent after the quakes. As many as four items of gold ornaments, two khukuris and five mobile phone sets were recovered from them. In a separate operation, police held Umesh Magar, 25, Manish Lama, 25, and Dilip Tamang, 25, of Udayapur. Magar had stolen a laptop from a rented room of Raju Sapkota in Budhanilkantha on June 9 and sold it to Lama and Tamang.