Gujarati visitor to CRPF camp gatecrashes wedding, uses invitation card to track bride's grandmother and rob her

Kasaragod: On a Sunday afternoon in April, a 73-year-old woman was washing glasses and plates behind her house in Thoduvalam, a hamlet in Cheemeni village, when a man in a white shirt and black trousers arrived on a white scooter and asked for water.

He was a stranger, but Narayani M was not surprised. After all, it was her granddaughter's wedding day. She had stayed back alone in keeping with a custom that a bride's house should not be locked when she leaves for her wedding. Instead of water, Narayani served him a glass of sherbet. She went back to washing the vessels. But before that, she removed the gold chain from her neck and tucked it into the fold of her 'mundu' at the waist. Call it instinct.​

Minutes later, the stranger had slipped into the house and was rifling through drawers and shelves. When Narayani confronted him, he shouted "Police! Police!" and warned her not to make noise. She turned and ran towards the neighbour's house, crying, "Thief! Thief!"​

The stranger dragged her back inside and locked her in a room. He then rummaged through the house and found a laptop bag containing the bride's Aadhaar card, voter ID card and earphones. He also found a mobile phone worth ₹8,000 and ₹10,000 in cash. He returned to Narayani, put a knife to her neck and demanded the gold earrings she was wearing. As she was removing one earring, he yanked off the other, tearing her earlobe. With the loot in hand, the stranger rode away on his scooter.​

Two months later, Cheemeni Police arrested the accused, Baksu Ali (47), from Napa Talpad village in Gujarat village, about 20 km from the Anand district headquarters.​

Investigators said they worked backwards. Police tracked him down after reviewing footage from 60 CCTV cameras. Their investigation found that Ali had gatecrashed the wedding of Narayani's granddaughter at Kannur's Kankol-Alappadamba Panchayat Auditorium in Mathil, about 20 km away. There, he stole a handbag, found the wedding invitation card inside it and used the address printed on the back to reach Narayani's house in Thoduvalam.

Yet the case remains puzzling, both for the improbable chain of events that led Ali to Narayani's house and for the unanswered questions about his motive. Baksu Ali struck Narayani's house on the second day after arriving in Kerala from Gujarat, using a scooter with a fake registration number.

"Nothing adds up. He comes from a well-to-do family, runs a fabrication business, owns residential buildings, and has no history of violence, not even a petty case against him," said Biju P K, one of the investigating officers.​

Stranger still, police say Ali is an alcoholic in a state where alcohol is prohibited. "His wife manages the business because he spends much of his time drinking," the officer said.

Ali arrived in Kannur on April 11, 2026, a Saturday, to visit his late brother's son, who was undergoing training at the CRPF Recruitment Training Centre (RTC) in Peringome, 30 km east of Payyannur. The nephew had secured the job on compassionate grounds after his father died in harness.

When Ali reached the RTC, he was turned away at the gate. Visitors were allowed only on Sundays. So he spent the day roaming around Kannur on a rented scooter. The next day, April 12, Ali returned to the CRPF camp at Peringome and met his nephew. On his way back, he gatecrashed the wedding of Narayani's granddaughter at the Mathil auditorium.

"While tracking him through CCTV footage, we traced him to the CRPF camp and obtained his phone number from the visitors' register," said the officer. "The footage from the auditorium showed him entering empty-handed and leaving with a handbag."

After robbing Narayani, Ali spent some time near the house drinking from a bottle he carried on the scooter. "We found the bride's Aadhaar card and voter ID card there. He told us he had discarded the laptop bag there as well, but we could not find it," said Biju.​

After the robbery, Ali travelled to Mangaluru the same day. "He was switching his phone off and on. We found that he left for Gujarat from Mangaluru on April 13," the officer said.​

Police had by then zeroed in on the suspect but did not immediately travel to Anand, suspecting he might be a serial offender who frequently moved out of his home state. "That was the impression he gave because of the ease with which he had executed the crime," the officer said. But investigators later found that he had remained in his village. The investigating team postponed the trip to Gujarat because they were tied up with election duty until the results were declared on May 4.

Baksu Ali was finally brought to Kasaragod on June 16. The court remanded him in custody for two weeks. "We are going to take him into custody on Monday for questioning. There are a lot of unanswered questions," the officer said.​

The scooter he used carried a fake registration number. "When we tracked the number, it belonged to another scooter that had met with an accident in Kannur town. The owner had left it by the roadside for 10 days. When he returned, he found the rear number plate missing," said Biju.​

Police are now trying to find who supplied Ali with the scooter, and where he sold or pawned the jewellery and, most importantly, why he committed the robbery.