Two elderly women passengers were drugged by two men from Kerala who stole six sovereigns of gold from one of them at Madurai railway junction on Monday. However, Tamil Nadu Railway Police nabbed the duo and recovered the jewels from them.
The victims, S. Kamatchi (64) and M. Marimuthu Natchiyar, who were admitted to Government Rajaji Hospital here, are yet to fully gain consciousness. The police said the women, both wives of retired railway employees from Mandapam in Ramanathapuram district, were returning home after visiting railway office here for collecting passes.
When they were seated in one of the coaches of Madurai-Rameswaram passenger train on platform 5, the two men started a conversation with them around 5.15 p.m. The train was scheduled to leave at 6.05 p.m. The men offered them two cups of tea. The gullible passengers consumed it mixed with some drugs.
“A male passenger who was watching these people talking to one another had mistaken the four for relatives. When he got down from the coach while talking over his mobile phone, the duo had pulled down the window shutters of the bay in which the women were sitting in a semi-conscious state,” said Inspector of Police S. Muthukumar.
Before the male passenger could come back to his seat, the duo had snatched the gold from Kamatchi, and fled. Other passengers who had boarded the bay found the women vomiting and alerted the police.
After going through the closed circuit television camera network put up by the Railway Protection Force, the TRP personnel, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Karthikeyan, cordoned off the railway station.
However, they found the duo, resembling the identity description given by the fellow passenger, entering the station late in the night.
Upon enquiry, the police found one of them wearing the gold chain around his neck and recovered it.
The police are yet to get a formal complaint from the victims. The accused, identified as A. Asraf (30) and M. Amsa (49) of Kannur in Kerala, are being interrogated.
