Having failed to crack open the case in which over 20 kg of gold worth ₹6 crore was spirited away from a car by two unidentified men from in front of a gold refining firm at the Edayar industrial area, the police are left rummaging through hours-long CCTV footage in the hope of stumbling across some lead to pursue.
The investigation was handed over to a team led by Aluva DySP K.A. Vidyadharan. According to sources, the police have collected the maximum possible CCTV footage from the area near the crime scene. They had also collected footage from a shop near a Bevco outlet at Kalamassery after finding a beer bottle near the scene of the crime, suspecting that the assailants had bought it.
The police have visited Bevco outlets at Kalamasserry and North Paravur after tracking down the particular brand of beer to those two outlets. They were hoping to find CCTV footage of the assailants wearing the kind of helmets as found in the CCTV footage received from near the crime scene shortly after the robbery.
But neither of the outlets had CCTV footage and the police had to be content with the visuals from a shop owner near the outlet at Kalamassery.
Hundreds of call records registered in the towers of various service providers in the area are also being examined besides the call records of the employees of the gold refining firm.
The robbery took place on the night of Thursday last when the car transporting 25 kg of gold to be refined and enhanced in purity being brought to CGR Metalloys Private Limited came under attack after it halted for the security guard to open the gate.
The assailants reportedly smashed the car windows and made away with one of the two boxes containing the gold.
Meanwhile, it is learned that the Inspector General of Police, Ernakulam Range, had summoned the investigating team to enquire about the headway made in the probe.
