Car-borne chain snatchers arrested, break arms during escape attempt
COIMBATORE: Two youths, who were arrested by special teams of Coimbatore city police in connection with Monday’s chain-snatching attempt on GV Residency Road, were produced before the judicial magistrate on Tuesday night with broken arms.
Abhishek Kumar (25) of Tiruvannamalai and Sakthivel (29) of Dharmapuri, were arrested on Tuesday morning near the airport where they live. Police called a press conference around 1 pm and announced the arrest of the suspects.
Seven hours later, around 8 pm, when police brought them to the house of the magistrate, the two had plaster of paris cast. Abhishek suffered a fracture on his left hand while Sakthivel’s right hand was broken. When questioned by media, police said they fell down while trying to evade arrest. The suspects were taken to Coimbatore prison later in the night.
According to police, the special teams traced the youths in SIHS colony road which is behind the airport and tried to arrest them. Seeing them, the two got into a car and tried to speed away, but the vehicle got stuck in a pit. The suspects got down from the car and tried to run, but fell down and suffered injuries, police claimed.
As per the police, Abhishek works a food delivery personnel and Sakthivel runs a taxi service. Sakthivel was allegedly in financial stress, and Abhishek used the situation to rope him into chain snatching. Abhishek is wanted in several chain-snatching cases. The two removed the number plate of Sakthivel’s car and were driving around the city looking for targets on Monday morning.
Around 6.20 am, they spotted Kowsalya (38) who was walking alone on GV residency road and tried to snatch her chain through the front window. In the impact, the woman fell down and the car narrowly missed running over her. As she raised alarm, the two sped away abandoning the robbery bid. She lodged a complaint with police who formed three special teams to trace the suspects.
“They removed the number plates of the car, so it was difficult for us to in tracing the car. But we identified some stickers on the car’s exterior and traced the car in a locality behind the Coimbatore airport on Tuesday morning,” said K Shanmugam, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South Range).
Deputy Commissioner (North) G Chandeesh said, “We intensified patrolling in areas where people usually go for morning walk. In the last two months, beat patrolling during the morning and evening helped us to reduce chain-snatching incidents. Because of active policing, the two tried out a new method.”