(This is the third part of a series on Kerala police officers, who are on the hunt for criminals. Watch this space for more.)
Chasing criminals across the state borders is risky enough. What if the search takes the policemen to a village of robbers and criminals? Policemen from Kerala often risk their lives while staking out a suspect in his turf. They would hardly have a name or a phone number to work with but the criminals have all the support system to evade or even intimidate their pursuers.
Sibi Thomas, the real-life cop who shot to stardom with his performance in Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, had a chilling experience as the circle inspector of Adhur in Kasaragod. An investigation into a jewelry heist took him and his colleagues to a shady village in Uttar Pradesh.
Thomas was yet to be cast as the police officer in the movie when he received a distress call from a jeweler from Kandamkuzhi on October 4, 2016. Robbers had broken open the shutter of the jewelry shop and made away with 39 sovereigns of gold and 4.5 kilograms of silver.
Read Cops on Trail Part - I: From bribes to chases, these unsung daredevils rely on every trick to nab a criminal
Thomas was assigned the investigation of the heist. He had sub inspector Philip Thomas, additional sub inspectors K Narayanan Nair and C K Balakrishnan, civil police officers Lakshmi Narayanan, K M Madhusoodanan, C Sivadasan and K Sreejith in his team.
The team started its work by examining footage from the surveillance cameras fitted in the banks and shops in the area. They noted a van passing the road several times in a suspicious manner. The van had gone towards Kandamkuzhi at around 3 am and returned immediately. The same vehicle repeated the pattern at 4.15 am. Unfortunately, the registration number of the vehicle was not visible in the footage.
The cops then rifled through the records of mobile phone calls in the location. After going through tens of thousands of calls, the investigators stumbled on a call that lasted barely one minute at around the same time the heist was thought to have taken place.
Read Cops on Trail Part - II: The cop who lorded over a racket of thieves
The phone connection was bought in Bengal and the call had gone to another state. Both the connections were bought on fake addresses but they were still active and the users were traced to Uttar Pradesh by their tower location. One of the phones had called a local number in Kasaragod.
The police found their first lead in Sheriff, a petty thief who admitted to have arranged accommodation and a vehicle for the gang of strangers from north India. The police found another phone number from the rent agreement signed by the suspects. They followed up on it until they obtained the photo identity card which was used to collect the phone connection. They also got hold of a photo identity card used to buy a cooking gas connection. Both the cards had the same photo but names were different. All of them were forged.
The police checked the present location of the mobile phone carrying the number. The user was in Delhi. Then he was seen to be traveling to a nondescript village in Uttar Pradesh’s Budaun district.
The Dhanpura village was 20 kilometers away from the district headquarters. The village has attained notoriety for the main livelihood of its residents - robbery. The villagers have bought up swathes of land with the money they looted from across the country.
The local police categorically refused to back up the Kerala police team. The last time a cop went near the village was 11 years ago, and he was shot dead by the villagers, they said.
Nevertheless, Thomas and team staked out the village. It was a hopeless situation. The roads to the village lay shattered under a sea of grass. The houses in the village were protected by a tall wall and a locked iron gate. Clearly they did not want any visitors. Nobody was allowed to get in the village without the permission of the village chief.
Stuck against a wall, the Kerala team approached the district police chief, who said he would be much obliged if they could take away as many villagers as possible. He said he knew that people from this village were behind many heists in Bengal and Karnataka but he could not act against them.
Read: Cops on Trail- Part IV: Everybody loves a theft in this Bengal village
However, persistence paid. An officer from the Uttar Pradesh police managed to glean some information about the suspects. One of them was Neth Ram, who sold country liquor when he was not touring the country. Cops disguised as potential customers lured Ram out of the village and arrested him.
It was not long before Ram started singing. He confessed to the theft in Kasaragod and exposed all his accomplices - Bhujpal, aged 54, Yad Ram, aged 38, Lakhan Singh, aged 36, and Omvati, aged 48. Bhujpal, Yad Ram and Lakhan Singh broke into the jewelry shop while the others backed them up.
Bhujpal seemed to be the mastermind of the operations. He even faced cases of burglary including the theft of 42 kilograms of gold from a Bank of Baroda branch in Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu.
Bhujpal, Neth Ram and the rest of the gang went to Kasaragod under the guise of traveling dress sellers. They found a helping hand in Shariff, who was a petty thief himself.
Read: Cops on Trail- Part V: From J&K to Coimbatore: The extraordinary exploits of the ‘Kannur squad’
Thomas and his team had unfinished business. They had to nab the others and recover the stolen jewelry. But that was easier said than done.
The villagers would run for their life at the sight of a stranger. If they come across a stranger at night, they would shoot at him. The cops from Kerala decided to surprise the villagers. Backed up by AK 47-carrying commandos of the Uttar Pradesh police, they raided the village past midnight. They had only 20 minutes until the villagers mobilized themselves. In that short time, the cops recovered four silver anklets from Neth Ram’s house. They wanted to catch the rest of the suspects but the operation would be too risky.
The police team would be an easy target on their return drive to Delhi 200 kilometers away. Thomas and team returned after nine days of investigation. They had one suspect and a few articles as evidence.
Back in Kasaragod, they were greeted with more surprise. Another branch of the same jewelry shop was burgled again. The cops came to know that a few migrant laborers had stayed in a building adjacent to the shop. They were traced to Chennai by their phone tower location.
Four of them were arrested by the cops following leads obtained from the shops from where they had bought mobile phone connections. However, they claimed to be innocent and the police team could not find anything contradictory in their statements.
The four Chennai men landed in soup because they sold off their SIM cards after use. Unscrupulous traders resold the SIMS to the migrants who might have then gone to Kasaragod to rob the jewelry shop.
The investigation had met a dead-end. The Kasaragod police are still looking for clues in the case.
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