The Hindu : Front Page : Lone woman duped of money, valuables

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Wednesday, Feb 13, 2008
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Lone woman duped of money, valuables

Staff Reporter

— Photo: S.S. Kumar

TELLTALE SIGNS: The ransacked room of the house at Gill Nagar in Choolaimedu on Tuesday.

CHENNAI: A man posing as a service engineer of a direct-to-home television company on Tuesday gained entry into an independent house in Choolaimedu and duped an aged woman of Rs.4.20 lakh in cash and 25 sovereigns of gold jewellery.

The police said Srinivas (35), who runs a BPO firm in Mahalingapuram, is a resident of Gill Nagar 3rd Cross Street. He lived with his wife and mother. On Tuesday, when his mother, Lakshmi (60), was alone in the house, the man came to the house to attend to a complaint lodged by her son pertaining to the quality of signal received.

Ms. Lakshmi allowed him inside and then accompanied him to the terrace to show the location of receiver equipment. After ‘inspecting’ the equipment, the ‘engineer’ asked her to remain on the terrace, while he went down to ‘tune’ the television set. There, he swiftly searched for valuables and took away Rs 20,000 from a wallet, Rs. 4 lakh from a box and jewellery from an adjacent room.

When Lakshmi came down, she found the man and the valuables missing. Mr. Srinivas told The Hindu that he had withdrawn Rs.4 lakh from a bank recently to pay a building contractor who was in charge of the construction work under way in his house.

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