Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Pettah burglary: youth arrested in Maharashtra

Thiruvananthapuram: The State police have arrested a 23-year-old man suspected to be a member of the gang of professional robbers responsible for the daring burglaries in the city and Chennai a fortnight ago.

A police team, led by Circle Inspector V. Suresh Kumar, arrested the suspect from a remote village in Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra early on Monday. Investigators identified the accused as Vikas, alias Rahul, of Asok Nagar in Shrirampur.

He is accused in a dacoity case registered in Vasai in Thane in 2006. The police raided his house and recovered a portion of the loot. His father is serving time in a Karnataka prison for an armed robbery there.

The police have identified the alleged kingpin of the gang, Chellayya, alias Vijay. They said his fingerprint on Maharashtra police records matched a few of those lifted from the houses burgled in the city and Chennai. Chellaya, who is absconding, was recently released from a Maharashtra prison where he was serving time in an armed robbery case. The police said one Govinda Bhai Pimply originally headed the Asok Nagar gang, which profited chiefly from illicit distillation and burglary.

The police shot Govinda dead in 2005 after he was named as an accused in a rape-and-murder case, committed during a robbery, in Mulki, near Mangalore, in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka.

The gangsters altered their method of operation after their leader’s death and refrained from harming their victims, fearing severe police retribution.

In both the burglary cases, the thieves had taken their victims hostage and gagged and tied them to their beds before escaping with the plunder in the family car.

The State police got the first clue of the identity of the culprits from a soiled jewellery purchase receipt they found in the car the robbers had stolen from Thiruvananthapuram and abandoned in Kochi.

A jewellery shop here had issued the receipt a day before the burglary. The police got the images of two of the suspects from the shop’s security camera recording. (They later identified them from Maharashtra police records.)

The shop was conducting a raffle for its customers at the time and one of the suspects entered himself for the lottery, giving the shop an address in Maharashtra.

Subsequently, the Chennai police found a plastic cover in the car the robbers had stolen from the house they burgled at Perungalathoor. The cover carried the motif of a garment shop the culprits had visited in Kochi before travelling to Chennai.

The gang is also responsible for robberies in various places in Goa and Maharashtra, Mangalore, and Kannur and Kozhikode in Kerala.

Rajendra Joshi and Sunil Pawar, Maharasthra police inspectors, and C. Mohanan, assistant sub-inspector, Kerala, were in the team that arrested the suspect.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Sen to open film fete
Low prices make expo enticing
X’mas bazaars from Thursday
Drive against spurious liquor
Law on transfer demanded
IT, tourism offer immense potential: VS
Terror probe a farce, says BJP
FUTA appeal
Plea to university
Community college
LDF State panel against raising retirement age of college teachers
GKSF: first weekly draw on December 13
Pettah burglary: youth arrested in Maharashtra
State not proactive in bringing down prices, says DCC chief
Sale of reservoir sand may begin in a few weeks
In Thiruvananthapuram Today

Copyright © 2009, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu