Chennai: An ex-hockey player who was allegedly involved in more than 50 burglaries in Chennai over the last several years, has been arrested. Police picked him up from his house at suburban Selaiyur and recovered 10 sovereigns of gold jewellery and Rs 1 lakh he had given to his two wives from his latest ‘operation’ in Mylapore.
Police said Mydeen and Mohan of Abhiramapuram had lodged complaints in May alleging that their houses were burgled and about 10 sovereigns of gold jewellery and `one lakh in cash had been taken. Special police teams were then formed to nab the burglar and extensive work on the footages from the nearby CCTV cameras was done. However, the footages showed no stranger entering the two premises on the night of the burglaries.
On further scrutiny of the CCTV footages, the investigators found a man moving suspiciously in an adjacent street at some distance from the victim’s house on that night. They identified the person from their previous crime records as Harry Philip Michael, a former state-level hockey player who had become a crack burglar specialising in the use of the crowbar to open the bolted doors late nights when the inmates were fast asleep.
Michael had been involved in 55 cases of burglaries in the past but the 56th break-in proved to be his undoing despite his taking the ‘usual’ precaution of never approaching the targeted house directly but get there through the terrace. In order to avoid the CCTV cameras that have increased in numbers and coverage of the city, the thief would choose his ‘victim’ house and approach it through the terrace or by jumping the walls of adjacent buildings, police said.
An alert team of policemen scanning the CCTV footages carefully picked up the pictures of Michael in the street next to the targeted house, obviously preparing to scale the walls in his usual manner.
He admitted to the crime after some intensive questioning at the Mylapore police station and led the police to his two wives for recovery of the looted gold and cash. He has now been remanded to judicial custody.
Police said Michael was a good hockey player in his younger years and had even played at state level. However, his life disintegrated after he became addicted to narcotics and needed money for procuring his stocks periodically. He had been caught a few times and served jail terms, including detention under the goondas’ act a couple of times, they said.
In between his burglaries and jail terms, Michael kept himself busy with either his narcotic shots or trying out the hockey stick with the young friends in his neighbourhood, police said.
