Chennai: The suspect in the conning of a high-end camera was identified as the son of a chauffeur of a senior bureaucrat in the state, according to sources.
This revelation came after Vinodhraj, who rented out his camera kit to the trickster, shared the suspect’s image gathered from the surveillance cameras in social networking sites and message sharing platforms.
Vinodhraj started getting calls from a few who were earlier duped by the same culprit.
The past victims also revealed that the culprit enjoyed a ‘certain’ level of immunity during the course of investigation since the senior bureaucrat threw her weight in support.
The earlier victims were given an option by police to withdraw their complaints citing that they will have to go to the court, and file ‘return of property’ to claim the recovered property.
The cases were dropped, and whatever the police could salvage from the culprit were returned to the rightful owners following a compromise.
“We don’t know yet whose son he is. Or to whom the culprit’s father works for. We would trace him with the details provided and book him as per law”, said a senior police officer.
Sources said Royapettah crime Inspector Sathyaseelan had joined duty after leave only on Wednesday. He had been asked to take over the case, which was earlier handled by a sub-Inspector.
On February 9, Vinodhraj rented his equipment — Canon 5D Mk — III to ‘Karthik’, assistant of ‘Siva’ who contacted the former for the equipment.
Karthik tricked Vinodhraj to handover the equipment without any valid ID proof, claiming that Siva had already mailed the proof.
Siva who responded to the calls from Vinodhraj till February 11 dodged sending any ID proof and the mobile number was switched off.
