Thiruvananthapuram: Attingal sub inspector Thanseem Abdul Samad had just dug into his meal when the phone at the police station rang. The caller was in distress. He had just been stolen of 28 sovereigns of gold by four nomadic women.
The officer left his meal unfinished. He had to act swiftly. The suspects could not have gone far. The following operation led to the arrest of four Tamil Nadu women within five hours of the crime.
The police team rushed to Sreedharan Nair's house near the Government Boy's High School. The aged man said that he was alone in the house when four women rang the bell and asked for some water. One of the women seemed to be pregnant. Soon after they left, he realised that he had been looted.
The women's modus operandi was simple but they erred in their calculation. As soon as Nair went inside the house to get water, one of the visitors quietly went around the house towards the kitchen door. The others distracted Nair when he returned with water. The intruder managed to open the kitchen door from the outside and get into the house. She opened the cupboard, found the locker and made away with the gold.
She then got out through the kitchen door, locked it and joined the others as if nothing had happened. The gang then hastened to go away.
The sudden exit seemed suspicious to Nair, who went inside the house to check. He found the kitchen door closed, but from the outside! He checked the locker and the
gold was missing. That was when he called up the police.
The search starts
The police went about inquiring about the women at bus stops and autorickshaw stands. They were told that four women had hired an autorickshaw towards Kallambalam. The sub inspector called up the autorickshaw driver, who said that the passengers had got down near Varkala. The police searched the route to Varkala but to no avail. The gang was proving to be smarter than they expected.
While the shadow police team searched the railway stations in the vicinity, the sub inspector and team followed the trail suggested by the autorickshaw drivers. The women had got down at Kallambalam and walked in the Varkala direction but as soon as the autorickshaw was out sight, they went the opposite direction, towards Kollam. The police took some time in collecting this vital information from the shop owners in the locality.
The police identified the autorickshaw driver who drove the women to Kollam. When they called him up, he said that he dropped them off at Kalluvathukkal. He said that the women were seen taking the road towards the left. In fact, the women had adopted the same strategy and taken a different route after the driver left. They were on their way to Chinnakkada in Kollam. The police located the third autorickshaw driver as well but the women remained elusive. The shadow police team in Kollam was also roped in.
Finally, in sight
The police bumped into a group of nomadic women accompanied by children at the Kollam railway station. They were five women and four children. The police initially ruled them out as suspects since the gang of robbers included four women and two children. Yet they sent a picture of the women to the Attingal sub inspector. He showed the picture to an auto driver, who identified three women in the picture as his earlier passengers.
The women were taken to the Kollam police stations. Women cops who frisked the suspects could not locate any valuables from them.
One of the members of the police team remembered that the gang was found near a pile of rubbish in the railway station. They searched the spot again and found 44 sovereigns of gold and Rs 70,000. The gold included the 28 sovereigns stolen from Attingal.
The police arrested Balamani, Radha, Krishnamma, Masani and Jyothi, all from Salem. They were remanded. The police believe that the gang was responsible for several other thefts. They are also accused of stealing Rs 50,000 from a bus passenger at Cheruvalli.
