Neelankarai police on Monday arrested two persons for cheating a family by posing as priests. Chandrapal Pandian, 65, a retired bank officer, is a resident of Teachers’ Colony, Neelankarai, along East Coast Road. Early last month, he and his family members visited a temple in Tiruvannamalai. There, a fortune-teller told them that an evil spirit inhabited their house. On July 21, five people reached Mr. Pandian’s house on the pretext of performing a pooja to ward off the spirit. They asked the family for a gold chain at the time of the pooja and took it with them when they left the house.
Following a complaint, a team of the Neelankarai police scrutinised CCTV footage obtained from Neelankarai, Adyar and Thiruvanmiyur and traced the owner of the car used by the five. Based on information from the owner, they arrested Joseph, 67, in Tiruvannamalai and later nabbed his associate Udayakumar, 37, in Chennai.
