Woman cop arrested for stealing recovered gold

Coimbatore: The city crime branch on Tuesday arrested a woman cop attached to the Singanallur crime police for stealing gold jewelleries recovered from thieves.
She had stolen 61.5 sovereigns of gold jewelleries over a period of three years.
Swapna Suja, grade II police constable, is in the service for over a decade. She was arrested based on a complaint from Singanallur crime police station inspector (in charge) S Sangeetha.
According to police, Suja was the ‘court contact’ of the station and her responsibilities include tracking the station’s cases and producing recovered valuables in the court.
“While reviewing the case files in last December, the then inspector of Singanallur crime police station S Sivakumar found irregularities in the documents. He had directed Suja to submit all the related documents within two days. Without submitting any documents, she had submitted a fake report claiming that the sought files were submitted,” a police officer said.
During an inquiry, it was revealed that Suja had informed the victims that their lost jewels were handed over to the court and it would be returned to them at the earliest, the officer said.
“But in 12 cases, she had neither handed over the recovered jewels to the court nor returned to the victims. She had stolen jewels weighing 61.5 sovereigns worth close to Rs 18 lakh,” the officer added.
Meanwhile, she had gone on medical leave from January. Subsequently, she was suspended in February and an inquiry was initiated. As she failed to appear for the inquiry despite repeated communications, inspector Sangeetha filed a complaint.
The CCB booked a case under sections 204 (destruction of document or electronic record to prevent its production as evidence), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 477 (a) (falsification of accounts) of Indian Penal Code (IPC). The accused was produced before the judicial magistrate who in turn remanded her in judicial custody.