COIMBATORE: Kovilpalayam police in the Coimbatore district arrested a 23-year-old woman and her male friend on charges of robbing gold jewels from a home-alone elderly woman after assaulting her.
The incident took place at the house of S Nanjammal (80) of Old Post Office Street at Kalappatti on Thursday around 2.15 pm. Nanjammal was being taken care of by her grandson G Arunkumar (32) of Kattoor Street at Kalappatti.
On Thursday afternoon around 2 pm, when she was sitting on a chair in front of her house, a man wearing a helmet and holding a wooden masher approached her. He suddenly started to assault Nanjammal with the masher on her head.
After she fell on the floor with bleeding injuries, the man robbed her gold neck chain weighing 2.75 sovereigns worth`1.25 lakh. He then managed to escape from the place along with a woman who was waiting outside the house.
The neighbours rescued Nanjammal and rushed her to a nearby private hospital. Also, they alerted the Kovilpalayam police which, in turn, alerted their patrol units and their counterparts in the Coimbatore city suspecting that the robbers may escape by crossing the rural police limit.
Surprisingly, the CCTV footage from the locality showed that two suspects rushed into a house in the same street - four houses away from Nanjammal's house after committing the crime. Locals cross-examined the CCTV footage with others and the investigation zeroed in on the house where the suspects were hiding.
The duo were identified as Nathiya alias Narmatha (23), wife of Karthik, a native of Gudalur in Nilgiris district and her friend T Vicky, alias Vigneshwaran (28) of Kattoor Street in Kalappatti.
"The police sources said that Nathiya's husband separated from her a few months ago after knowing about her illicit affair with Vigneshwaran. Then the two started to live together. As they face a financial crisis, they decide to rob Nanjammal. Nathiya, who often met Nanjammal at her house, was a mastermind for the robbery as she knew about the jewels owned by her, said police.