Fifty rail wagons and several coaches cut
up and shipped to India
Terry Hutson
MEMBERS OF the SAPS Organised Crime Unit (OCU) based in Durban and Gauteng swooped last week on a Clairwood scrap merchant in Durban and seized a large quantity of scrap metal valued at an estimated R3 million, stolen recently from a Spoornet yard in Boksburg North. Four people have been arrested.
In the audacious caper, almost 50 rail wagons and a number of coaches, plus overhead copper catenary cable, steel poles and railway lines were cut up on the Boksburg site without anyone noticing anything untoward, and transported by road to the Durban scrapyard, where they were packed in containers for shipment to India. According to the investigating officer, Inspector Corrie Pieterse, members of the OCU swooped on the Durban yard and also confiscated seven containers before they could be loaded on the container ship Emirate Star 2. He told FTW that the police suspected this wasnÕt the first stolen consignment to be exported in this manner. He said the bust was the result of a combined investigation between the Durban and Boksburg Organised Crime Units and appealed to anyone with further information to contact him on 083 484 6202.
