Belagavi: A doctor heading the Blood Bank of the Belagavi Institute of Medical Sciences (BIMS) has been arrested for torching several high end cars parked in front of bungalows over the last few weeks.
He set ablaze 11 cars early Wednesday at Jadhav Nagar in Belagavi before being caught red-handed while torching another car on Thursday.
Alerted by a local resident, the police caught 37-year-old Dr Amit V Gaikwad , a pathologist working with BIMS for the past 10 years. He had been living in Sadashiva Nagar for the past five years.
Going by Deputy Commissioner of Police, Seema Latkar, the pathologist ,a native of Kalaburgi, had been targeting posh cars parked before bungalows in various localities and was caught while torching a car parked near Vivanta Apartment in Jadhav Nagar.
“He would wear a face mask along with a helmet and drive around the city finding luxury cars parked outside the houses and set them on fire using a long stick wrapped in kerosene- soaked material.
He placed the burning cloth below the wiper on the bonnet and fled when the car caught fire,” said Ms Latkar, revealing that the cars torched included a BMW parked in front of MLA Feroz Sait's brother's house in Vishveshwar Nagar recently. It appears the doctor also smashed and destroyed several cars parked in various localities in Kalaburgi on his visits home. But the police is still investigating this.
Owing to his strange behavior, none of his colleagues at BIMS were on good terms with him and had even removed him from several Whatsapp groups they had created.
The director of BIMS was also seriously considering sending him on long leave, according to Ms Latkar. When arrested, the doctor had no explanation to give the police for his strange fetish of setting cars ablaze.
