The practical knowledge of an elderly woman, G. Meera, in safekeeping of gold jewellery saved over 640 grams of gold and Rs. 77,000, which could have fallen in the hands of burglars who struck at their locked house at Tiruppalai on Sunday night.
The woman’s son, G. Kannan Babu and his wife, were shattered to see their house broken open when they returned from Chennai on Monday morning.
They had left behind nearly 100 sovereigns of gold, all belonging to Babu’s younger sister, when they left home on Friday.
Babu was shocked when he saw the articles in drawers, cupboards, almirahs and other containers in the rooms in the one-storey house strewn around.
“My sister, working in Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, had given me her jewels to be pledged as she required Rs. 10 lakh to show as bank deposit for her visit to the US.
In the meantime, we went to Chennai to attend a family function, leaving the jewels behind,” Babu said.
“The burglars had left behind three bottles of liquor indicating that they had consumed liquor and remained at home for a long time,” one of the neighbours, R. Sethuraman, said.
The family was worried about revealing the incident to Meera, a heart patient, who was in Chennai.
They brought her back without telling her about the incident.
The woman was asked to take out the jewels from the places where she had kept.
“Other family members were unaware of this,” Mr. Sethuraman said. The woman took the jewels, kept bundled in small quantities, from various places.
“At least 644 grams of gold and Rs. 77,000 were recovered during the search late in the afternoon,” a family friend said.
In the end, the family had lost eight sovereigns of gold, two diamond rings, a platinum ring and Rs. 20,000.
The Tallakulam police are investigating.
She hid over 600 grams of gold in places they could not locate
