Chennai: A four-member gang was arrested by the Kotturpuram police on Monday night and 53 sovereigns of gold and 1 kg of silver were seized after a team used special techniques to narrow down on the accused.
Following several complaints of burglaries in the area, the Kotturpuram police formed a special team headed by assistant commissioner K.N. Sudharshan who looked at CCTV footage acquired from the area with great scrutiny.
A common element in the footage acquired from several days was a car, resembling a Honda-make lurking around, the police noticed.
Acting on suspicion, they acquired the list of all Honda cars in the city. A unique five-spoke alloy of the car and the first few numbers of the registration plate were acquired from more footage of the area.
They were then able to narrow down to 730 Honda Civic cars from the 2,836 Honda cars using the registration. The unique five-spoke carbon brown alloy of the car helped the number to go down to 6.
When owners of the six cars were questioned one confessed to having sold the car to a man from Saidapet. The car seems to have exchanged several hands before reaching the gang, police said. When police were able to track down the final owner and question him, he confessed to having been involved in the burglary. Based on his inputs the three other men of the gang were also arrested.
Further investigation revealed that the gang initially used an auto rickshaw but had bought a second hand Honda civic to make it easy to transport the booty. The auto was also seized.
The arrested men have been identified as Srinivasan, 28, of Saidapet, Marimuthu(26) of Puducherry, Shiva (29) of Uragadam and Rajesh(27) of Kundrathur
