The Nilgiris district police have developed an image of one of the suspects involved in the sensational dacoity at former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s sprawling estate in Kodanad last Monday. The computer-aided portrait was built based on the inputs given by the security guard Krishna Bahadur, the lone witness in the case so far, police sources said on Thursday.
Even as investigators were examining at least half-a-dozen suspects, special teams were working with a private IT firm in Coimbatore to analyse the footage of the suspect vehicles captured by night-vision cameras.
Besides verifying the antecedents of former employees of the estate and those who visited the 800-acre campus for contract or daily-wage work, police were scrutinising the details of vehicle thefts reported in the West Zone comprising eight districts, including Dharmapuri, Salem Coimbatore and Erode.
Footage of visuals captured in cameras at all toll plazas in the zone were also being perused, the sources said.
Contentious decision
The district police, apparently on the instructions of superiors, have not sought the assistance of the Special Task Force (STF) that has companies of commandos strategically located along the Western Ghats that run across the border of Tamil Nadu with Kerala and Karnataka. This is being seen by some officers as an unwise decision.
“The fake number plates and hand gloves suspected to have been used by the dacoits were found on the outskirts of Kotagiri. It is possible to reach Karnataka border from that point. Therefore, engaging the STF personnel for combing operations along ghat roads would help,” a senior police officer said.
Nilgiris District Superintendent of Police Murali Rambha said police were probing all possible angles in the case and a breakthrough was expected soon.
Since neither the Estate Manager nor other staff working in the palatial bungalow hardly had any knowledge about the articles in the rooms used by the former Chief Minister and her close aide V.K. Sasikala, investigators have no clue on what the dacoits might have decamped with after killing one security guard and injuring another
