Cop suspended for siphoning off stolen property

Coimbatore: A 35-year-old female constable attached to Singanallur police station was suspended on Friday for misappropriating recovered stolen items. According to an inside source, constable Sapna Suja had stolen gold ornaments worth around Rs 50 lakh from the recovered items over a period of three years.
Suja, the source said, was the “court contact”, whose responsibility was to keep track of the station’s cases and produce recovered stolen properties before court.
“It was also her duty to coordinate with other police stations and collect recovered stolen properties in the cases that we were dealing with. She never used to hand them over to court or another station fully. In some cases, she hadn’t handed them over at all. Whenever she was questioned by sub-inspectors or inspectors, she used to say she had informed assistant commissioner or other senior officers and handed them over to some other police station,” the source said.
However, the newly-appointed inspector, Sivakumar, recently ordered a report on cases that were solved, recovered stolen properties and recovered properties that were handed over to victims or court. “It was then we realized that we were neither in possession of recovered properties in 11 cases, nor were they handed over to the victims. The same was also not recorded in the court’s recovery list,” the source said.
Following this, the inspector summoned Suja, seeking an explanation. She, however, went on long leave the next day after she was summoned.
Other sources in the station said Suja had been misappropriating recovered stolen properties ever since she joined the station four years ago.
On Friday, Suja was suspended for not submitting recovered stolen properties to the court, and not appearing before the court or police station when she was summoned to provide an explanation.