Kannur: In seven days, Kannur City Police cracked one of the biggest house break-ins in the district in which a wealthy rice trader lost cash and gold jewellery worth nearly Rs 2.75 crore. The thief turned out to be a next-door welder who shut his business and became a full-time burglar.

Police solved this one with the help of a year-and-a-half-old burglary case — gone cold and involving jewellery worth Rs 4.5 lakh. But the identity of the accused proved an even bigger shock than the multi-crore heist itself.

Valapattanam police Sunday night arrested Lijesh C P (45) for the burglary at rice trader K P Ashraf's house at Manna in Kannur's Chirakkal Grama Panchayat on Sunday, December 1.

A week ago, on November 24, Ashraf reported the break-in at his house, stating that Rs 1 crore in cash and 2,400g of gold jewellery had been stolen. Police recovered Rs 1,21,43,000 in cash and 2,136g of gold jewellery from Lijesh's house, located just 20 metres behind Ashraf's home, said Kannur City Police Commissioner Ajit Kumar. The jewellery and cash were stashed away in a secret compartment neatly crafted by screwing a metal sheet to the underside of Lijesh's 6x6 ft bed, the officer said. The room on the second floor of his house was littered with tools. The substantial seizure suggested that Lijesh may have targeted other houses as well.

Police nailed Lijesh because his index fingerprint matched with one collected more than one year ago from the burgled house in Keecheri, 5 km from his home in Manna, said Ajit Kumar. Police had checked the fingerprints of 76 persons of interest for the Valapattanam burglary. "We got his fingerprints just yesterday (Sunday). We ran them with the ones collected from Keecheri because the modus operandi of the two burglaries were similar. Now we will run his fingerprints against similar unsolved burglaries," said Valapattanam Sub-Inspector Unnikrishnan, who investigated the Keecheri case.

The cold Keecheri burglary, which helped crack the Valapattanam case, came to light when Jaseela P P home returned from abroad in September 2023 after the death of her husband, businessman Poovan Kulathil Niyas. Based on CCTV footage, police discovered that a burglar, dressed in jeans, a shirt, and a mask, carrying a crowbar, entered the house at 1.54 am on August 20, 2023, and left around 3 am. He left with a gold bracelet, bangles, a waist chain, anklets weighing 92 grams, and a file containing Niyas's documents. The burglar removed the window grill near the car porch to gain entry. The burglar was not wearing gloves. "He had wrapped his hand with a cloth. That mistake got us a fingerprint," said Police Commissioner Ajit Kumar.

After Lijesh’s arrest, police learned that he had been running a welding shop near Jaseela’s house in Keecheri, which he had shut down well before the burglary took place.

'Never had a complaint against him'
Chirakkal panchayat's two-time Manna ward member Sindhu K V said she could not see C P Lijesh as a burglar. "He is a gentle and friendly person. We never had a complaint against him," she said.

Around four years ago, he built a two-storey house in front of his dilapidated ancestral home and moved in with his mother, wife, and two school-going children, said Sindhu, who has known the family for years. "Nothing about their lifestyle ever raised suspicion, which is why I find this hard to believe," she said. "It will be devastating for his wife. I can't bring myself to face her today. I'll meet her in a couple of days," she said.

How police cracked the Valapattanam case
On November 19, a Tuesday, K P Ashraf, a wealthy rice trader, and his family left home to attend a wedding in Madurai. When they returned Sunday night (November 24), they found that their house, protected by hill walls, was burgled. There were no signs of forced entry. The kitchen grills at the back had been unscrewed to allow the burglars to enter. Inside, Ashraf had kept Rs 1 crore in cash and jewellery weighing around 2,400 g, worth around Rs 1.75 crore, in a safe but had left the key to the safe on another shelf.

Unlike the Keecheri case, the money and jewellery involved were huge and police took the case seriously. The FIR was registered at 1.30 am on November 25.

The house was cordoned off, and K9 Squad and fingerprint experts were called in. A 20-member special investigation team headed by Kannur ACP Retnakumar T K was formed. The other members of the team included Station House Officers of Valapattanam, Cherakkal, Mayil and Kannur City Police - Sumesh T P, Azad Marutherippoyil, Sanjaya Kumar P C and Sanil Kumar K, respectively.

The team went through call detail records of 115 phone numbers, reviewed footage from around 100 surveillance cameras, verified fingerprints of 76 persons of interest, checked the locations, status and phones of 67 criminals with similar modus operandi, and took the statements of 215 persons. The police went through the mobile tower dumps (data) from Kozhikode to Mangaluru -- a distance of 220 km -- and check-in registers 36 lodges in Mangaluru suspecting the burglars might have escaped to Mangaluru on a train.

But the burglar was 20m away. He tried to evade the CCTV cameras installed at Ashraf's house but erred when he tilted one camera away, said Ajit Kumar. The new position of the camera faced inside the house and police got footage of the burglar in action: a semi-bald person, he said.

"When we went to Lijesh's house to ask if he had noticed anything unusual on the night of the burglary, his behaviour seemed off. He matched the semi-bald description but we didn't have anything concrete on him," said Sub-Inspector Unnikrishnan, a member of the 20-person team.

After extensive research, police ruled out the outsider angle and focused on the one strand of evidence they got -- the half-bald person. "We even staged a dummy burglary at Ashraf's house, with a semi-bald person playing the role of the burglar," said Ajit Kumar.

Their investigation always came back to Lijesh, the semi-bald welder who was frequently spotted on CCTV at Ashraf’s house. "He could never provide a consistent explanation for his repeated presence near Ashraf’s house," said Sub-Inspector Unnikrishnan.

On Saturday morning, police brought him in for questioning and kept him until nightfall, said Commissioner Ajit Kumar. Police also collected his fingerprints.

By Sunday, December 1, the results came through. His index fingerprint matched those taken from the Keecheri crime scene. From that point, it was only a matter of time before the seemingly gentle Lijesh cracked. "By Sunday night, he led us to the hidden stash under his bed," Unnikrishnan said.