Hyderabad: Two prominent Non-Banking Finance Companies (NBFCs) are facing heat from the Cyberabad police for allegedly allowing the pledging of snatched gold ornaments.
On Thursday cops from the Cyberabad Central Crime Station arrested former managers of Muthoot Finance and Shriram City Union Finance, Aneesh Kumar and Sheik Nagul Meeran respectively, for allegedly helping chain snatchers by allowing them to pledge snatched gold ornaments. Aneesh and Meeran were managers of the companies when Shiva’s gang pledged the gold, but later they left their jobs.
The cops have also launched a manhunt to arrest two absconding senior retired cops who are working as vigilance officers of these companies. The retired police officials were identified as former SP Aftab Alam Khan and ACP Shyam Sunder.
The police team has recovered gold ornaments worth around Rs 1 crore, which was pledged by the snatchers at these companies. Police commissioner C.V. Anand said that more people were turning to chain-snatching as they found it easy to pledge the gold. After the death of chain snatcher Shiva police found that he had been leading a lavish life by pledging the gold at NBFCs like Shriram City Union.
The commissioner said that it was mandatory for NBFCs to thoroughly verify the customers’ identity when they come to pledge gold ornaments. “As per RBI norms they have to verify the identity with at least three ID proofs. The arrested people violated these norms,” he said.
He added that when the police went to the two NBFCs the two retired cops behaved very rudely with the police.
Police recovers gold from killed chain snatcher Shiva
Two months after the killing of notorious chain-snatcher K. Shiva in an encounter the police has recovered most of the snatched chains. The police has contacted hundreds of women and has informed them about the seizure. They will get back their gold through court.
Following the confession of Shiva’s wife Nagalakshmi and associates M. Jagadeesh and M. Rajkumar, the police found that the gang was involved in 700 chain-snatching cases. They committed 511 snatchings in Cyberabad from June 2012 to August 2014. The police recovered 3.75 kg gold, Rs 4.5 lakh, two cars, a bike and several household articles.
Shiva’s gang used to identify victims and work out an escape plan before approaching them. While Shiva used to target women his wife used to sit in a car and keep watch in the area.
The gang’s victims who visited the Cyberabad commissionerate on Thursday expressed their gratitude to the police. They said that they now feel safe after the arrest of the gang.
