Eloor jewellery theft: Police verified 20 lakh calls to track accused

KOCHI: The Eloor jewellery theft had put the police in a tight spot as the operation seemed to have been executed to perfection. Adding to their woes, the jewellery’s CCTV cameras had been dysfunctional for a while making it all the more difficult for the police to zero in on the culprits. However, the police tracked the accused after verifying about 20 lakh phone calls and hundreds of CCTV visuals received from nearby areas. 

“We found that a few phone numbers were switched off after the theft. Upon further investigation, we came to know that the accused were from Surat, Gujarat. However, some of the persons escaped to Bangladesh. A team led by M Manoj, Inspector of Police, went to Surat by road and commenced an investigation with the help of Crime Branch of Gujarat police.

However, the first and second accused, along with their families, escaped to Kolkata. They once again escaped narrowly from the hands of the police at Howrah railway station. They headed to Petrapole border and were arrested from there,” said an official with the investigation team.

Other than its owner P R Vijayakumar, the jewellery shop hasn’t had an employee for the last 15 years. Further confounding the police, no suspicious sightings of strangers were reported from the region in recent times.  While receiving an alert that the accused escaped to West Bengal, the team travelled to Kolkata by flight and arrested the key accused, said police.