Recently, elderly couple Ramakrishnan (70) and Susila of Aminjikarai were shocked to find that 71 sovereigns of gold jewellery they had kept in their bureau at home were missing. They reported the theft to the police.
A special team worked on the case and quickly arrested one Manikandan, who helped the couple in household work. The police also found that he had previously stolen 22 sovereigns from another house.
He had reportedly stolen the jewellery from the couple’s house at least 20 days before the theft was detected. Manikandan was one among the 110 persons held as the police pulled up their socks and claimed to have cracked as many as 125 cases in a span of 15 days. They recovered valuables worth Rs 2 crore. Police said some of the cases were reported about six months back.
Faced with a huge backlog of cases, city police commissioner S George conducted a review meeting of police officers recently. He ordered the formation of special teams, led by Joint Commissioner and Deputy Commissioners, to detect the cases.
The result: all cases were solved within 15 days of the CoP having ordered the formation of the teams.
As much as 964.5 sovereigns of jewellery, 1 kg of silver jewellery, 19 motorbikes, 17 laptops, five electronic items and Rs 50 lakh cash were recovered.
Police also arrested 34 persons involved in 47 theft and burglary cases in the city and recovered stolen items from them. Out of that, 10 persons were held in South Zone, 10 in East Zone and 14 in West Zone.Among those arrested, Brito Lawerence of Maduravoyal, Selvaraj from Ramapuram, Senthilkumaran and Ramamurthy of Pallavan Salai, Ramesh Gupta, Paulraj, Karthik and Ranjith Kumar of ICF, Karuna alias Karunakaran and Mani alias Manikandan of Villivakkam, and Tamilmani alias Subbu of Kavangarai were reportedly previous offenders. The recovered valuables were handed over to the owners.