Coimbatore SP holds meeting with jewellery shop owners to insist on safe transportation of valuables

Coimbatore Superintendent of Police R Pandirajan to hold a meeting with the jewellery shop owners and the financiers in the district to insist on the safe transportation of valuables products on the highways.

“Though police could analyze the modulus operandi of the highway robbers, it was highly impossible to watch each and every vehicle that crosses the borders. We cannot deploy police personnel for each vehicle that transports valuables. So, we are to instruct the jewellery shop owners and the financiers in the district to deploy retired police or army personnel as the security to transport their valuables safely,” said Superintendent of Police R Pandirajan.

Adding he said he would be having a meeting with the jewellery shop owners in a week time.

The recent highway robbery on the Cochin-Coimbatore bye-pass road was not new and it just added to the number of highway robberies in the Salem- Cochin Bye-pass Road. According to a senior official in the rural police, the gold jewellery shops in the District have been more frequently transporting gold jewels from Kerala to Coimbatore and other parts of Tamil Nadu. Similarly, some financiers are transporting a large amount of cash from Kerala to Tamil Nadu Via Coimbatore.

On following the movements for some time, the robbers mostly plot their plan on the borders of Kerala-Tamil Nadu. While most of the times, the vehicle that comes from Kerala are targeted within Kerala on TN-Kerala border, the valuables transported from Tamil Nadu to Kerala, were targeted on Madukkarai and KG Chavadi area in Coimbatore,” the senior official narrated.

“A year ago, the trend was of targeting the cars that transport the Hawala money and now, the robbers started to target on the vehicles transporting gold and money,” the senior official said.

Let it be the Hawala money or gold jewels or any valuables, the robbers do not risk by snatching them on the road, instead, the robbers always hijack the car along with the valuables and would abandon the vehicle before decamping with the valuables. “In every case, any one of the person from the victim’s side might have helped the robbers to know about the route and other information,” the senior official said.

The senior official said that they would educate the jewellery shop owners and the financiers to collect the complete details of the employees including the Aadhaar card to trace if anything happens untoward.