The Crime Branch on Tuesday arrested two more accused more than a year after gold worth ₹6-crore was stolen from Popular Finance’s office at Seawoods in Navi Mumbai.
The police have recovered around one-and-a-half kg of gold worth ₹44 lakh from the two arrested members of the Nadar gang. With the seizure, gold worth around ₹1 crore has been recovered so far. The arrested accused have been identified as Ponnuswami Tangaswami Nadar and Muthukumar Cherman Nadar. Both the accused are residents of Dharavi and hail from Tamil Nadu.
Year-old case
On August 6, 2016, five masked robbers armed with sickles and a firearm barged into Popular Finance’s office at Sector 42 in Seawoods and stole 23 kg gold worth ₹6 crore and ₹9 lakh in cash. The accused had threatened five staffers, broke CCTV cameras and stole the CCTV image recorder.
The police had arrested seven accused, including main accused Arput Nadar and his associates Iqbal Pathan, Prakashraj Nadar, Revathi Nadar, Tamil Selvan, Sudheeshtraj Nadar and Kunna Swami Nadar. Four accused are still absconding. The police said the gang was involved in many dacoity and robbery cases across the country. Navi Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police Prashant Burde said.“We charged the accused under sections of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act last year. All of them except Revathi and Tamil Selvan are in jail.”
Officers of the Crime Branch’s central unit said Ponnuswami was arrested from Nerul after receiving a tip-off. Nitin Kausdikar, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch, said: “Following Ponnuswami’s arrest, Muthukumar was nabbed from Dharavi. Ponnuswami was the one who did the recce before the robbery and distributed the booty among the gang members. Muthukumar mortgaged a part of the loot at Muthoot Finance in Tirunelveli.” Crime Branch officers recovered gold worth ₹44.63 lakh from Muthoot Finance and Muthukumar’s residence in Dharavi.
Mr. Kausdikar said, “Muthukumar was the one who tipped-off the gang members about a large amount of gold being present in the Popular Finance office. Ponnuswami then did a recce and a detailed study of the number of CCTV cameras in and around the office. He also determined the best time to rob the place after assessing the time minimum number of people were present in the office. Six accused were involved in the robbery, the others hatched the plot and disbursed the booty.”
Disbursing the loot
The officers said that Muthukumar hid his share of the booty at his house in Tamil Nadu. He mortgaged around 50 gms with Muthoot Finance. The kingpin of the gang, Arput Nadar, who is now in jail, ordered that the booty be brought to Dharavi and passed on to someone else. Senior Police Inspector Jagdish Kulkarni said, “When we nabbed Muthukumar, he had already brought some of the booty to Mumbai. The rest we recovered from the Muthoot Finance office.”
