The team probing the robbery in which two unidentified men attacked a car and fled with 20 kg of gold worth ₹6 crore in the Edayar industrial area on Thursday night is yet to make a significant breakthrough in the case.
The car, which was carrying gold in half-melted form belonging to a couple of major jewellers, came under attack in front of CGR Metalloys, a gold refining firm, at Edayar when it was stopped for the security guard to open the gate.
Sources said that four employees of the firm, who were in the car at the time of the raid and were taken into custody for interrogation, had been released by the police. As of now, no one was in custody and the probe had been widened to cover the entire breadth of the district and beyond.
Though the investigating team led by Additional Superintendent of Police M.S. Sojan had received CCTV footage of the assailants, neither their faces nor the registration number of the motorcycle in which they had fled the scene could be identified. The police continue to look into a potential conspiracy since they find it hard to believe that a robbery of such a scale could be pulled off without prior planning or knowledge about the movement of the gold.
The police are also not fully convinced of the nature of the attack either. The firm was engaged in melting and enhancing the purity of the old gold ornaments bought back by jewellers, to a uniform level. Even the police were not aware of the presence of such a firm in the area, which gave further credence to the prognosis that prior planning might have gone into the robbery.
There was a set pattern to the movement of gold into the firm. It used to be transferred along the same route between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. The police have taken the statements of the occupants of the car.
