Attack on  Cusat ATM: Burns on face land culprit in police net

KOCHI: If it were not for the burns on his face, 33-year-old Subin Sukumaran of Kalladiyil House at Pannachipara in Poonjar would have escaped police after setting the ATM on fire on the Cusat campus at 7.48pm on May 2. Though Subin had made plans to leave for Bengaluru on May 4 night, a minor scuffle with a stranger in front of a lodge near Ernakulam Town (North) railway station where he was staying in the afternoon that day upended all his plans. 

A police patrol team which reached the spot on seeing the scuffle noticed the burns on Subin’s face. As an alert was given to all police personnel in the city to look out for the suspect in connection with the incident, the police team grew suspicious about the wounds and asked him about it. When Subin fumbled and failed to give a convincing reply, the team took him into custody. 

“The police team acted immediately. If they had made a wrong judgment, he would have escaped from the spot,” said sub-inspector Mahin Salim.  Police said Subin reached the city on April 29 to plan the heist on the Cusat campus where he had worked as a security guard from December 2017 to January 2018.

“The agency which recruited him as a security man on the campus sacked him after they found his behaviour not good. He was angry with the agency for throwing him out of the job,” a police officer said, adding that he carried out a recce of the campus for a day after reaching the city and finally zeroed in on the ATM kiosk after noticing that it was the only spot which lacked visible security.

During interrogation, he told the police that he committed the act to avenge the decision by the agency to sack him. “He totally missed the surveillance camera and even forgot to wear a mask. He suffered burns on his face and hands when he lit a paper inside the ATM kiosk after pouring petrol,” the police said. After zeroing in on the ATM kiosk, he took an autorickshaw from a junction in front of Cusat to go to a petrol station at Pathadipalam from where he bought petrol saying that his two-wheeler had run out of petrol and he was stuck on the road. 

“He claims that he has done his graduation which we need to verify. He lost his mother at a young age and was staying with his father. He has been away from his home for the last few years. He had worked in Thrissur and some other places. A case is pending against him at Guruvayur police station for making a hoax call threatening that there was a bomb planted at the temple,” a police officer said.