Thrissur: The townsfolk is alarmed by a spate of robberies in and around Thrissur despite heightened police patrol and proactive vigilance by residence associations.
Thieves are getting more imaginative, if the latest incidents are any indication.
Gone are the days when everyone used to blame unwanted visitors from the notorious villages of Tamil Nadu. The modern-day robber can come from anywhere in India. By
the time the police trace the robbers by analysing their modus operandi, another gang would have struck.
The new breed of robbers are dangerous. They not only loot the houses but even pose a threat to the lives of the inhabitants. The robbery in a house at Peramangalam on
Friday has left the whole area sleepless.Bank ATMs, jewellery shops and even temples had also been targeted in the area. And all these break-ins point to organised crime.
No clue
Many of the thefts in the houses in the area remain untraced for want of evidence. Many of the houses did not have a surveillance system. Even in those places with cameras, the footage was not clear enough to pinpoint the accused.
Daring strikes
The police are yet to make much headway in all the five of the major robberies in the district this year. It started with a jewellery heist at Chalakkudy in January. The police are yet to trace 12 kilos of gold.
Investigations into robberies at Thaikkattussery and Ponnookkara have also hit a stonewall. At the former place, an empty house was robbed of 50 sovereigns of gold and Rs 1 lakh as the family of Balakrishnan had gone to visit a temple in the wee hours. A similar break-in happened at a house at Ponnookkara when the residents were away to consult a doctor. By the time they returned, 30 sovereigns of gold and Rs 5,000 were gone.
The latest theft was in a house at Mathilakom near Kaypamangalam last week. Thieves made away with 120 sovereigns of gold and Rs 80,000 from an empty house on October 6.
As many as 11 houses were broken into in a single night in Panjal panchayat. Though the thieves prised open many doors, they did not got in; however, many people lost their money, gold, watches and motorbikes. One of the thieves tied up a pensioner and made away with her Rs 6,000. The crime scene gets crowded with several more cases of chain snatching in buses. Some people were targeting the hundi in temples.
The jewellery on station road at Chalakkudy was targeted on January 27. The leads obtained from the surveillance camera footage helped the police chase a professional robbers' gang which called itself the 'Uduva Holiday Robbers'.
The police nabbed four suspects after days of surveillance in Bihar, Jharkhand and Bengal. Yet they could recover only one kilogram of gold as the prime suspect fled with the booty to Bangladesh.
The robbers are becoming more daring. A gang of robbers caused a road accident on the national highway to rob smugglers of their gold when they were on their way from the airport. Though passers-by stopped to respond to the apparent road accident, they fled as the situation got out of hand. The police traced the eyewitnesses to get a lead to the
accused but the arrests were delayed.
The police said that the case had 11 accused, all from Koduvally. Three of them had surrendered before the police.
The police, however, have a face saver in the theft case at Edamuttam. The police have nabbed a gang of thieves, including a couple, which robbed the house of non-resident Malayalis.
