A special team of the city police has arrested a key member of a gang suspected of stealing valuables from cars by duping owners through innocuous diversionary tactics.
The arrested is Balaraj Muniswami, 55, of Gandhinagar in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu. He was nabbed when the police were investigating a similar case reported earlier this year. The arrest was made by the team led by Circle Inspector A. Ananthalal on the direction of Assistant Commissioner of Police K. Lalji.
Muniswami is accused of being part of a gang that robbed valuables, including ₹2.40 lakh, cheque books, Aadhaar card, and other documents from the back seat of a car parked in front of Dhanlaxmi Bank on Shanmugham Road on March 3.
The gang pulled off the theft by diverting the driver’s attention by dropping a ₹10 note next to the car door. When the driver unlocked the central locking system to open the door to pick up the note, the gang members got away with the suitcase containing valuables, a senior police officer said.
According to the police, the gang boarded a KSRTC bus bound for Coimbatore from Thrissur with the suitcase. The information shared by the driver and the conductor of the bus proved critical for the police to crack the case. In fact, an argument had broken out between the gang members inside the bus.
The gang disembarked at Kottamaithanam in Palakkad, leaving behind the suitcase in the bus. The conductor found the suitcase after the bus reached Coimbatore, and realising that the documents belonged to someone from Kerala, he handed it over to the State Police Chief on return.
The police zeroed in on the accused after showing the photographs of those convicted for similar offences to the driver and the conductor. It soon emerged that Muniswami had served jail sentence after being arrested by the Thiruvananthapuram Cantonment Police in 2010.
