Carelessness in properly locking the doors and safe vault by the family members of a driver led to a gold heist, in which 60 sovereigns were stolen from their house at Tirunagar here on Sunday night.
Police said Prabhakaran, a driver with a private school, and his family members had left for Chennai on Sunday morning to attend a family function.
The family returned home on Monday morning by an overnight train.
On reaching their home at SRV Nagar, the family members were shocked to find that the lock on the front iron grille gate missing. They found 60 sovereigns of gold and Rs.25,000 in cash missing from an iron safe vault, the police said.
“While leaving home in a hurry, they had left the keys on the vault. Similarly, they had left the keys on a cupboard too. The family members had also forgotten to lock the main door of the house,” Inspector of Police P.Palani (in-charge of Tirunagar) said.
Had they not left the keys on the chest, the culprits could not have laid their hands on the valuables, for the vault was very strong, Mr.Palani said.
Superintendent of Police V.Balakrishnan, who inspected the spot, said the police were on the lookout for a suspect in the locality.
Prabhakaran’s wife Jayalakshmi had been involved in real estate business for the past 17 years, the police said.
Lock not broken
The iron gate had no marks to show that the suspects had broken open the lock. The police suspect that the lock could have been opened with keys without much trouble.
The police are suspecting that somebody who had a thorough knowledge about the movement of the family members had struck the house in the thickly populated Shenbagam Street.
A sniffer dog was pressed into service and the police lifted fingerprints from the scene of crime.
