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CHENNAI: Eight people were arrested for smuggling school text books weighing eight tonnes from a government school in Vengal near Thiruvallur on Thursday night.

Police said a patrol team picked them up during a vehicle check. They found text books loaded in a truck and being taken to Chennai.

During interrogation, police found that the books were stolen from Velliyur government high school. Police sources said that those were not the current year books but belonged to the year 2014-15. Based on a complaint from the school authorities, police registered cases under IPC section 457 (lurking house-trespass or house-breaking by night in order to commit offence), 380 (Theft), 414 (Assisting in concealment of stolen property).

"Since those were not current year books, we suspect them to have taken the books to dispose them to scrap merchant," said Vengal inspector Vinayagamoorthy . "The theft would not have happened without the help of insiders. We are probing the hand of the school authorities involved in the issue," he said.

The arrested were identified as Musthafa, Nagappan, Balamurugan, Seenu, Raghu, Anandhan, Ettiappan and Jayapaul. They were remanded in judicial custody.

