The sensational robbery case at T. Nagar here early this month in which an armed gang robbed two employees of Pothys cloth store of Rs. 81 lakh has been solved with the arrest of ten accused persons. Part of the cash and some gold jewels were seized. Most of the suspects were claimed to be associates of Manalmedu Sankar, an alleged gangster who was shot dead in an encounter with the police in 2007.
Commissioner of Police (in-charge) Sanjay Arora the tip-off came from the Organised Crime Intelligence Unit of the State intelligence. Special teams formed to crack the case did methodical work leading to the arrest of the suspects. “It was days of painstaking investigation by a number of police personnel that led to the detection of the case. The breakthrough came when we got information that the suspects under cover in a town had bought a four-wheeler. Police carried out a physical search of the entire town to locate the vehicle,” he said.
Investigators recovered cash, gold jewels and some vehicles worth about Rs. 36 lakh. Of the 13 persons involved in the robbery, ten were arrested and efforts were on to apprehend the other three persons. “Ten suspects came in five motorcycles committed the robbery. They were monitoring the movement of cash from Pothys to the bank for a couple of days. After committing the crime, they split into teams and went to different places”.
‘Kovai’ Praveen, Illakiaraj and two others belonging to Nagapattinam and Tiruvarur districts were professional criminals. “The other six suspects were also involved in various crimes over the years. They met while in prison and conspired to commit major offences,” he said.
Asked of the gang was planning to commit any crime with the robbed money, the Police Commissioner said the matter was under investigation. Four motorcycles and weapons used to commit the robbery were seized.
Mr. Arora also commented on the fake marksheets case. Police investigations reveal that all the ten fake marksheets of Plus Two were supplied by the two accused already arrested in the case. “We are now checking where the printing took place. The fraud took place when students applied for revaluation of the papers. The accused send the fake marksheets by post. Many students were not aware that the marksheets were bogus ones,” he said.
