A day after N. Murugan, 45, the suspected mastermind of the Lalithaa Jewellery heist, surrendered before a court in Bengaluru, the police recovered around 12 kg of gold ornaments at Poosadurai on the outskirts of Tiruchi on Saturday.
The ornaments were found buried on the banks of the Cauvery and recovered based on the information provided by Murugan. With the Bengaluru police being granted six-day custody of Murugan for an inquiry into a burglary reported earlier this year in Bengaluru, a five-member police team from Karnataka brought him by road to Tiruchi early on Saturday morning.
The police team, assisted by the Tiruchi police, took him to various places. They finally recovered the gold ornaments on the riverbed of the Cauvery near Tiruverumbur.
The ornaments were buried at a depth of about five feet on the river bed, the police said.
The bar codes of the recovered jewels matched those stolen from Lalithaa Jewellery, and all of them were said to have been found intact.
However, the Bengaluru police team could not recover ornaments stolen from Bengaluru.
Claiming that it was a joint operation by the Tiruchi city and Bengaluru city police teams, Tiruch Police Commissioner A. Amalraj told The Hindu that 12 kg of stolen jewels, worth ₹4.30 crore were recovered during the operation.
Since the prime accused Murugan was under the custody of Bengaluru police, the recovered property would be produced before the competent court in Bengaluru.
The Tiruchi police would subsequently initiate legal proceedings to bring back and produce the recovered jewels before the Tiruchi court.
Mr. Amalraj also said that already 4.250 kg of gold ornaments worth ₹1.76 crore had been recovered from I. Manikandan, 34, of Madapuram and P. Kanagavalli, 57, of Seerathoppu in Tiruvarur. P. Suresh, another key accused in the case, surrendered before a court in Tiruvannamalai. With Saturday’s recovery, 16.250 kg of gold jewels have been recovered totally so far.
The Police Commissioner said that inquiry was still on to recover the remaining jewels.
Special teams would continue the investigation. Murugan was operating under various names including Sivakumar, Siva and Balamurugan and had committed various offences in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, the police said.
