At least 90 sovereigns of gold jewellery were burgled from the house of a brick-kiln owner S. Balakrishnan at Ponmeni Road in S.S. Colony here.
The family members left the house locked on December 29, 2017 and the crime came to light when they returned home on Monday night.
The police said that unidentified persons had broken open the wooden door with rods and rummaged through the wardrobes in all the four bedrooms in the house on the first floor. However, the police were perplexed as how the lock of the front iron doors was left dangling on the doors without having broken open it.
The police suspect that the accused could have used a duplicate key to open it. The wooden door was broken open with crowbars.
The accused had emptied several jewellery boxes and looted only the valuables leaving the boxes strewn in the bedrooms. The keys of the wardrobes were left in the locks which made the job of the burglars easy.
The police said that Mr. Balakrishnan, his wife and daughter had left home on December 29 to Karnataka, while his son Sivasubramanian and his wife left from Chennai the next day.
The police suspect that someone thorough with the movement of the family could have been behind the crime. Besides, they had not touched huge quantity of imitation jewellery kept in the wardrobe but had moved out only with the gold.
The high compound wall also worked to the accused advantage as all their movement inside the compound was not visible from outside.
Assistant Commissioner (Crime-Thilagarthidal) S. Mohan Thambirajan inspected the scene of crime. Fingerprints were lifted from the scene and sniffer dogs pressed into service.
