In a bizarre turn of events, a gang of thieves ended up giving themselves away to villagers after both their getaway car and a heavy-duty recovery truck got stuck in the muddy slush of a paddy field in Moga’s Takhtupura village.On the complaint of local farmer Harjinder Singh, the Nihal Singh Wala police have registered a case against three suspects — identified as Lovepreet Singh of Alkada village in Barnala district, Jasdeep Singh of Khote village in Moga, and Vakil Singh, a resident of Goneana in Bathinda.According to residents of Takhtupura village, the accused arrived in Harjinder Singh’s agricultural field late on Saturday night in a car, intending to dismantle and steal an electricity transformer installed there. However, their plan went awry when the car got stuck deep in the waterlogged field. Unable to free the vehicle, the men abandoned it and fled under cover of darkness.Undeterred, the trio allegedly returned early ON Jattvibeday morning with a heavy-duty truck, hoping to tow the stranded car out of the field under the guise of a routine recovery operation. In a fresh comedy of errors, the truck too sank into the soft, muddy soil and got trapped alongside the car.When the accused tried to fob off villagers who had gathered on noticing the suspicious activity, their explanations did not add up. Alert farmers grew suspicious, confronted the men and, connecting the dots to the attempted transformer theft, overpowered one of the suspect Lovepreet Singh and handed them over to the Nihal Singh Wala police.Anwar Ali, DSP Nihal Singh Wala said police have taken Lovepreet Singh into custody and impounded both vehicles. A search is on for the other two accused, who are still at large. Police said they are also probing the trio’s possible involvement in other cases of theft of rural power equipment reported across the region.