The elderly woman had just returned home and was clearing leaf litter on the compound. She heard a noise from inside. She stepped inside the house to check if something had fallen.
Little did she know that a man was waiting behind the refrigerator.
The woman, who runs a coconut oil outlet near Athani in Nedumbassery, usually returns home around 5pm.
After tending to the surroundings of her house, she would go to her son’s house nearby for dinner and spend the night there.
On September 30, as she entered the kitchen to check, the man hiding behind the refrigerator grabbed her from behind and snatched her gold chain at knifepoint.
“He threatened to kill her if she raised an alarm. He then covered her face with a piece of cloth, pushed her into the bathroom and locked her inside from the outside before fleeing,” says Aluva DySP Baiju Paulose, who led the investigation.
The woman shouted for help through the bathroom’s ventilator. Her neighbours rushed to rescue her, and alerted the police.
The investigation posed a challenge as the assailant had concealed his identity with a helmet, jacket and gloves. He was careful enough to not carry a mobile phone. The police had no immediate lead.
“We spoke to the woman’s relatives and examined the CCTV cameras in the area.
We then expanded the search to neighbouring houses and roads. One camera captured a man approaching the area and later fleeing on a scooter,” says Baiju.
The man had parked the scooter around 200m away from the house. His face was not clearly visible, but a breakthrough came from a seemingly minor detail.
“There was a dent on the front of the scooter, apparently caused by an impact. We noticed it in the footage and began looking for the same vehicle in recordings from other cameras,” the DySP adds.
When the team examined footage from the day before the robbery, they found the same scooter in the area at around the same time. That suggested that the suspect had surveyed the locality before the crime.
The police then traced the scooter’s movements towards Angamaly. “We examined around 70 cameras and checked nearly 40 possible registration numbers before we could identify the vehicle,” says Baiju.
Meanwhile, information obtained from the Motor Vehicles Department led the team to the registered owner. Plainclothesmen were deployed to track him.
Though the owner was found to be abroad, local residents told officers that his brother-in-law occasionally used the scooter. He was eventually traced to a house in Angamaly and arrested.
“The suspect was careful not to carry a mobile phone and had taken steps to conceal his identity. Analysis of the CCTV footage was crucial,” says Baiju.
“During questioning, he admitted to pawning the stolen gold chain at a private financial institution.”
The investigation was conducted under the supervision of Ernakulam Rural District Police Chief K S Sudharsan. The team led by Paulose included Circle Inspector B K Arun, Sub-Inspector J Joshi, police officers Mahinsha Abubacker, K M Manoj, M S Sreeraj, Mohammed Shahin, S Shameen and Aniljith, along with members of the District Anti-Narcotic Special Action Force.