The police arrested a woman and three others, who staged a robbery to avoid returning nearly ₹9 lakh collected from 150 people as part of a Deepavali chit fund at Madhavaram on Saturday.
The arrested were identified as Amutha, 45, her mother Nagammal, 70, their relative Uday Rajan,31, and his friend Gandhi Rajan, 39, of Red Hills.
According to the police, Amutha was running the chit fund for the past three years without the knowledge of her husband Pandi, an engineer at a private firm.
She returned the money collected from depositors with interest for two years. “But this year, she was not able to. So she decided to stage a fake robbery with the help of her mother and a friend,” explained a police officer.
Amutha littered her house with articles to give the impression that it had been ransacked.
“She then left the house and got Gandhi Rajan, introduced to her by Uday Rajan, to enter her house and leave in 10 minutes,” said a police officer.
Amutha returned to the house and raised a hue and cry.
She claimed that her mother had been gagged and the money in the cupboard had been stolen.
“During the investigation, we checked her call records and found something fishy,” said the officer.
CCTV footage
When the police scanned CCTV footage from the locality, they noticed Gandhi Rajan entering the house.
The police interrogated all of them, and they confessed to the crime.
A case has been registered with the Madhavaram Milk Colony police station and further investigations are on, sources said.
