In a pre-dawn operation on Thursday, the police arrested eight members of a gang from north India, who broke open automated teller machines (ATM) of two private banks and took away ₹30.05 lakh in Coimbatore in the early hours of December 10. The gang landed in the hands of the police while attempting to leave Tamil Nadu in two cars and a mini lorry.
The gang, which used a gas cutter to cut open the ATMs, was tracked analysing the call data of a member’s phone from a tower. The number used by the accused was identified in a tower dump analysis of mobile numbers that were active around the scene of the crime between 11 p.m. on December 9 and 2.30 a.m. on December 10.
All the eight accused were brought to Coimbatore and kept in police custody by the investigation teams. They are likely to be produced before the court on Friday. The gang was nabbed based on specific information passed on by special teams of the Coimbatore city police that investigated the case. The arrested have been have been identified as A. Salman alias Mubarak, 30, of Bharatpur, Rajasthan; S. Amithkumar, 35, of Faridabad in Haryana, A. Zuber, 19, of Rajasthan; I. Mustaq Idris, 32, of Mathura district in Uttar Pradesh and A. Zulfiqar, 25, of Bihar.
Based on the tip-off from the Coimbatore city police, that those involved in the thefts were moving in three vehicles, a police party conducted a surprise check of vehicles at the Keerambur toll plaza.
Hot chase
A car with Haryana registration sped past the toll plaza, ignoring the signals of the police to stop around 5 a.m. The police gave it a hot chase. Three members of the gang travelling in the car abandoned the vehicle on the roadside in Bommakuttaimedu village and escaped into the nearby area under the cover of darkness. The personnel of striking force, armed reserve and local police were pressed into service to trace them.
Meanwhile, the police fetched a couple of helicams from the local photo studios to trace them. The equipment displayed the presence of one of the accused sitting atop a tree and the other two hiding in bushes. The police rounded up all the three. The police party that continued the vehicle check intercepted a Delhi registration car with two occupants a little later near Keerambur. Investigations revealed that the duo belonged to the same gang, and they too were taken into custody.
Sources said that when the operation was going on, the Namakkal police alerted the Salem city and the Salem rural district police. A Salem city police team intercepted a mini-lorry bearing Rajasthan registration number at Seelanayakkanpatti at the city’s entry point and took into custody three youths from north India.
