Last week, when residents of an apartment in Kilpauk in the heart of the State capital managed to catch two masked and knife-wielding robbers, who were trying to gag a senior citizen couple in a flat, it was a rude shock for them.
When they removed the masks, it was found that the two robbers were women, aged 27 and 22. The sisters had even parked a motorcycle to escape after robbing the elderly couple. This may be a one-off incident where women take to such hard-core criminal activities that were traditionally associated only with men.
Historically, women were considered least prone to commit heinous crimes when compared to men. And in most cases, they were involved only in minor offences that did not involve serious criminal intent or meticulous planning. But just as the Kollywood made success the concepts of “woman dada” with characters like Sornakka, the reality too seems reflect the movies. This March, the Tambaram police in Chennai had a peculiar case to handle. A retired bank employee, who came to a bank branch suddenly created a flutter in the branch shouting that he had been kidnapped and the gang had sent him to withdraw the ransom amount demanded by them. The police probe led to a 50-year-old woman heading a gang of thugs. They arranged honey traps for elderly men who were looking for second marriages. There are many such cases being reported where women had displayed a criminal mind on a par with men. But does this mean the criminality among women is on rise? The statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau and the Prison Statistics show that women constitute hardly 3 per cent of the convicts in the State and about six per cent of the undertrials and persons booked by the police for crimes.
While it would require an in-depth sociological and criminological study to answer these questions, what cannot be denied is that the State has indeed witnessed a few cases where women showed a criminal bent of mind on a par with men.
Fallen starlet backed con artist
Leena Maria Paul: Like most other starlets, Leena Maria Paul doesn’t mind having the odd relationship or two to further her career. This is probably the thought that made her agreeable to getting involved with the much younger master con artist Sukash Chandrasekar. Leena realised that sticking around with him and helping him run frauds was not just profitable, but also extremely enjoyable. Except the one time when she tipped off the Bangalore police to some of his less shadier dealings, out of pure spite. Scorned woman or not, Sukash still saw enough ‘potential’ in his personal honey trap to come after her and reconcile, as soon as he got out on bail. Police sources related how she was essential to his business for closing the deal — a necessity in the confidence game. All of that quickly turned to dust when word got around that the two had been duping hundreds with their get rich quick ponzi schemes. After three years of living the fast life — imported cars, Gucci bags, partying at the best hotspots across the world — Leena and Sukash were brought down by the Chennai and Delhi cops from a farmhouse outside the capital.
Mastermind behind Paazee fraud
A Kamalavalli: This is a name that nearly half-lakh people, mostly in the western districts in the State, will never forget all their lives. This Chennai-based woman is believed to be the mastermind behind what later came to be known as Paazee fraud, one of the biggest and most sensational ponzi scheme frauds ever reported in the State. Kamalavalli, whom anyone would take to be a young and educated woman, carried out a fraud headquartered in the textile town of Tirupur in 2009 in which nearly `493 crore was swindled from 43,000 investors from across the State and country. A former Tamil daily journalist and his son were her partners in crime. “They collected money from people under various schemes like FOREX trading and other investments. But there was nothing on the paper or any material evidence for such a huge fraud. The receipts to the investors only stated they were fees for the ‘investment training’ given to them. The only hope for us was when we managed to seize their computers,” says a police officer who was once involved in the probe.
Honey Trapping Middle-aged
R Savithri: She looks very homely, in the sense that she belongs to a cultured family. This is what Ramamurthy, a 62-year-old retired bank employee, must have thought when he met this 50-year-old woman in a temple the first time in Poonamallee. But only later he found out that she was spearheading an extortion gang and the interest she showed in marrying him was just a honey trap. Ramamurthy managed to escape when the gang, two days after he was kidnapped and severely beaten up, let him visit a bank at Tambaram to withdraw his deposits and pay them the ransom for release. But police said several middle-aged and elderly men had fallen victims of the trap of Savithri. “She identifies her target from the matrimonial ads by men seeking second marriage. Her main tactic was to speak in a way that would flatter men and make them expose their financial details. If she finds them as worthy targets, then she would organise their kidnapping by a few undertrials by promising a cut to them,” said a police officer who handled the case. Being an ex-convict and having served in prisons many times, Savithiri “recruits” men who would be serving in prison for minor offences.
Expert in Vanishing act
Shahanaz: It was a fraud that Chennai had never heard of before. It is always considered women are the vulnerable partner in a marriage. But it still remains a wonder how this Keralite woman managed to extract gold and money from at least 15 men in the city after marrying them. Her modus operandi was simple: make gullible men fall in love with her and quickly marry them. But within days she would vanish with gold and cash from her new partner, never to be found again. The fraud sounded so weird when one of her ‘husbands’ Manikandan knocked the doors of city police in August 2012 seeking to trace his newly-wedded wife. But as the news was flashed in media, at least 14 other men came forward saying that Shahanaz was their ‘wife’, who similarly vanished with gold and money after marrying them. As the news made nation-wide sensensation, the police traced her in Bengaluru and arrested her. But after she was released on bail, she met reporters and argued that she had never cheated so many men by marrying and then deserting them. She identified one person Prasanna as her husband and that he had deserted her.
Killing Kid to take revenge
S Poovarasi: Her face became a symbol of hatred and disgust when the gruesome murder of a three-and-half year-old child, whose body was stuffed in a suitcase, made news in July 2010. S Poovarasi, who is now serving life sentence for the murder in Puzhal prison, had strangled the child and stuffed the body in a suitcase before placing it in a Nagapattinam-bound bus at CMBT. The reason she gave was to take revenge of her colleague whom she alleged cheated after having a relationship with her. “It is a usual case that we handle when people kill others in a fit of rage. What shocked us was she chose a child as her target and she meticulously carried out the disposal of the body after packing it in a suitcase. Even professional criminals would go wary when handling dead bodies,” said a police officer who handled the case when asked to recollect the incident. She had told police that she was furious with the child’s father Jayakumar, who had forced her to undergo abortion twice because of their illicit relationship. She murdered the child to avenge the man’s actions. But the anger over her action was so severe that even other inmates in the prison, where she was lodged, refused to talk with her.
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