The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Police get transit warrant

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Wednesday, Dec 09, 2009
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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Police get transit warrant

Staff Reporter

Robbery suspect produced in court

State police team to bring him to State
He is at present housed in a jail in Pune

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The State police on Tuesday obtained a transit warrant from a court in Maharashtra to bring burglary suspect Rahul alias Vikas Gopinath Chawan to Kerala.

The 23-year-old is suspected to be a member of the gang of professional robbers responsible for the daring burglaries in Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai a fortnight ago.

A police team led by Circle Inspector V. Suresh Kumar had arrested him from a remote village at Asok Nagar at Shrirampur in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra early on Monday.

The police produced him in front of the Judicial First Class Magistrate, Shrirampur. The court remanded the suspect to judicial custody and granted a transit warrant to the police to take him to Kerala.

The court ordered that the accused be produced in a court in Thiruvananthapuram on or before December 13. Rahul is housed in a jail in Pune.

The police are hiring a car to bring him to the State. Mr. Suresh, Assistant Sub-Inspector C. Mohanan and crime squad members M. Faisal and Christopher Shibu will escort the suspect.

Rahul is accused in a dacoity case registered at Vasai in Thane in 2006. His father is serving time in a Karnataka prison for an armed robbery.

The police have also identified the alleged kingpin of the gang, Chellayya alias Vijay. They said his fingerprint in Maharashtra police records matched with some of those lifted from the houses burgled in Thiruvananthapuram 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.

Govinda was shot dead in a police action in 2005 after he was named an accused in a rape and murder case, committed during a robbery, at Mulki in Mangalore.

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 robbers had taken the victims hostages, and gagged and tied them to their beds before escaping with the plunder in the family car.

First clue

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

A jewellery shop here had issued the receipt a day before the robbery.

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.)

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