After sixty years of stealing, 84-year-old ‘Silver’ Srinivasan’s calling card, according to him, is his integrity. When he is caught, he doesn’t try to feign ignorance, refuse to admit to his offence or pretend he is not the person the police are looking for. “I am Silver Srinivasan, the person you are looking for,” is what he tells them.
Srinivasa Raghavan says his hometown is Tirupati. He leads a peripatetic existence. He is not too ambitious and the money value of his loot is rarely high. His daily menu is four idlies in the morning, curd rice for lunch, and four idlies in the night. When he runs out of money, he strikes, typically at the houses of senior citizens. Velachery, Madipakkam and Pallikaranai are his favourite haunts.
Srinivasan got caught when K. Senthilmurugan, Inspector at Mylapore police station, was investigating a theft at a house in Mylapore recently. CCTV footage showed an old man moving out from the house. When Srinivasan bumped into the police, he repeated his refrain to them but they were dismissive of his claim. At the police station, he recounted his life of crime which started when he was 14 and boasts of some 200 capers. His exploits made him a marked man in the 90s when the then Director General of Police Walter Devaram added “Silver” to his name due to his preference for silver items.
Picking on the gullible
Inspector Senthilmurugan said Srinivasan would wait outside a temple and pick on those he considered gullible. He would offer to do a ritual and ask them to keep jewellery on a bowl and close their eyes. When they opened their eyes, Srinivasan would be long gone, along with the loot.
Sometimes, he would introduce himself as a distant relative of an elderly couple and gain their confidence. Claiming that his daughter was getting married, he would tell them he wanted to buy her an almirah and ask to look at the almirah in their house so he could get an idea. He would then decamp with whatever jewellery he could lay his hands on in the almirah.
