Gold robbery case solved, 4 held

Friday, Feb 25, 2005

TAMBARAM, FEB. 24. The Chengai East police have arrested four persons on charges of robbing 17 kg of jewellery after assaulting two persons near Meenambakkam airport in January and recovered most of the stolen property.

One of them, Devaraj, is an employee of Prakash Gold Palace at Purasawakkam, whose employees were attacked on January 14, when they were returning with the jewels they had bought in Kolkata. The police are searching for one more person.

Briefing reporters at his office today, S. R. Jangid, Inspector-General of Police (North Zone), said a special team detained P.C. Jiten, when he was trying to pledge jewels in a pawnshop at Flower Bazaar on Wednesday evening.

Sandip Mittal, Superintendent of Police, Chengai East police district, received information about Jiten’s movements, as special teams were monitoring jewel and pawnshops at Sowcarpet. During interrogation, Jiten confessed to having committed the crime with M. Mahaveer and A. Vincent, S.C. Siddharth, jewellery store employee and Sankar. While three of them were arrested in a pre-dawn swoop today at Choolaimedu, where all of them stayed, Sankar escaped.

Jiten and Vincent, posing as policemen, intercepted an auto by which the two employees were travelling on the day of the crime, while the three others stayed back in a Mitsubushi Lancer car, which had a fake registration number.

They assaulted Devaraj and the auto driver and took away a bag containing the jewels.

Jewellery seized

More than a dozen special teams worked on the case round the clock, travelling to Kerala and Pondicherry and interrogating more than 500 people. The police seized about 16 kg of jewellery and Rs. 2.5 lakhs in cash from the four persons, who got the money after selling a portion of the 17 kg of stolen jewellery, valued at around Rs. 1.15 crores.

With the money, they bought a Ford Ikon car after making a down payment of Rs. 1 lakh. They spent Rs.40,000 on a DVD system for the new car.

The police also seized the Mitsubushi car, given to them by the youths’ friend staying at Choolaimedu and a Cielo Matiz car used by them earlier and two motorcycles used for the robbery.

Mr. Jangid said the Director-General of Police, A.X. Alexander, appreciated the work of the special teams and announced rewards for them.