Activities of dare devil criminals, who pose as passengers in commercial vehicles plying the roads in Imo State, have increased ahead of this year’s Easter festivities.

Saturday Vanguard investigations also revealed that victims of “one chance” employed by some criminally minded drivers and the compatriots in crime have similarly increased.

Narrating her ordeal, a final year Economics student of Imo State University, Owerri, Miss Ijeoma (surname withheld), said she boarded an Orlu bound commercial bus at Warehouse, Orlu Road, Owerri without knowing that three of the supposed passengers were armed robbers.

“Immediately after the New Road Junction and before Umuaka, three passengers announced that they wanted to stop. The driver came to open the sliding door for them but the supposed passengers pointed pistols at him”, Ijeoma recounted.

Continuing, the badly frightened IMSU student said the hoodlums beat the driver mercilessly, took over the vehicle and drove into a remote village.

“Somewhere along the unpaved village road, the vehicle sank in a muddy and it was at this point that one of us braved it and ran away and alerted people in a nearby village. Before the villagers arrived, we were robbed”, Ijeoma recounted.

All efforts made to reach the Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, Mr. Samuel Oodee, as his mobile telephone line could not be reached, following system failure in Owerri.