The police team investigating Sunday’s robbery at Menamkulam, wherein a couple were looted of gold and valuables worth nearly Rs.7 lakh by a four-member gang, has obtained fingerprints of the accused and is in the process of identifying them.
According to M.K. Sulfikar, Deputy Superintendent of Police in-charge of the Attingal sub-divison, the team was verifying the fingerprints collected from the scene with the database available with the police.
There were doubts whether a person who knew the couple well was involved and this angle was being probed.
The Dy.SP said that contrary to reports that emerged soon after the robbery that the 74-year-old Shanta was tied and gagged before the robbers went about their job of taking jewellery that she was wearing and clearing an almirah of more gold and cash, they had bound and gagged her just before they left the scene so that she would not raise an alarm.
She was threatened to remain quiet till then.
Shanta and her husband Sahadevan, who had returned to their home at Panchayathunada in Menamkulam after a visit to their children in United Kingdom recently, were looted of gold weighing nearly 30 sovereigns, electronic appliances, and Rs.11,000 in cash by four unidentified men around 1 a.m. on Sunday.
Bedridden
With Sahadevan being bedridden, the robbers had not attempted to harm him or tie him up. Interestingly, the police are reportedly adopting a method to trace the robbers, which was successfully used to trace the culprits in the sensational Chelambra bank robbery in Malappuram in December 2007.
This was to monitor all telephone calls from mobile phone signal towers closest to the crime scene, a herculean task. But it led the police to a mobile phone number used by the culprits to communicate between themselves and which was the turning point in the case, which saw 80 kg of gold and Rs.25 lakh being stolen by a four-member gang.
