Soon after the attack on head constable Anbalagan late on Tuesday night, police wireless handsets was buzzing with messages: Nab the three suspects who assaulted a fellow policeman on duty with a machete.
Joint commissioner of police
Prem Anand Sinha, who is in charge of West Chennai zone, got into action. Photographs of three men, taken on Anbalagan’s phone, had already popped up on the police server.
Police soon found that the three suspects were from
Koyambedu, Nolambur and Thiruverkadu. The police zeroed in on
Thiruverkadu as a possible hideout that the gang would choose because the locality was mostly dark and deserted at the time.
“We mobilised police personnel immediately and deployed them at strategic locations to prevent the three from fleeing the city,” said additional commissioner of police of north Chennai H M Jayaram.
Soon a police patrolling party at Thiruverkadu spotted the suspects and alerted nearby mobile units to assist them.
Even as the team of armed policemen cornered the suspects, they ran into the slums seeking refuge. The police unit then split into three separate teams and chased them.
“Within five minutes, policemen sent wireless messages saying they had caught the suspects,” said Sinha.
Police sources said the three tried to scale a compound wall and flee but got hurt while doing so. The three were identified as Satish Kumar, 31, of Nolambur, Panneerselvam, 24, of Koyambedu and Ranjith, 22, of Thiruverkadu.
Representative image
