RAMANATHAPURAM
A 40-year-old woman has lodged a police complaint that she was robbed of 300 sovereigns of gold jewellery by bike-borne robbers in Kamuthi when she was coming out of a bank after collecting the jewels from the locker. The police, however, pointed to ‘contradictions’ in her version and suspected foul play.
Uma, wife of Kuruvalingam, an autorickshaw driver of Mettu Street in the town, lodged a complaint with Kamuthi police on Tuesday afternoon stating that she was returning home after collecting the jewellery kept in the locker of Ramanathapuram District Central Cooperative Bank, when the robbers, who followed her on the two-wheeler, snatched the bag containing the jewellery and fled the spot.
She said the jewels belonged to her elder sister and she had kept them in the locker after her sister’s husband Boopathi Raja, a businessman, handed them over to her for safe custody in 2014. As her sister and her husband wanted the jewels for their son’s marriage, scheduled for Wednesday, she collected them from the locker, Uma said.
Kamuthi police registered a first information report and launched an investigation. The police said though the ‘robbery’ took place in a busy residential area around 11.30 a.m., Uma lodged the complaint only at 1.15 p.m. and she could not justify the delay.
She told the police that she raised an alarm when the robbers snatched her bag, but her cries for help were drowned in the sound of the loudspeaker blaring in the area. But the police said there was no loudspeaker in use there at that time.
They further said about 20 people, who were sitting in front of a house in the area to condole the death of a person, said no such incident took place.
The police also said investigation revealed that Uma walked out of the bank in just five minutes and it would not be possible to take out the jewels from the locker in a such short span of time. Interrogation revealed that Uma had pledged jewels in different banks and obtained loans to the tune of ₹55 lakh, they said, and suspected that she could have pledged the jewels given to her for safe custody.
Uma’s sister and Boopathi Raja also told them that the complainant was lying, the police said. Superintendent of Police Omprakash Meena visited the spot and conducted an enquiry.