BENGALURU: It was a meticulously planned and perfectly executed heist: A gang struck at a vehicle that was transporting cash on the outskirts of Bengaluru and made away with Rs 1 crore before the break of the dawn. The gang crossed two state borders by changing the registration number plate of their getaway car and fled to Kerala. But just when they thought the job was over, the unexpected happened: FASTag details of their car gave away their identity!
Bengaluru Rural district police on Monday said they solved the Madanayakanahalli robbery case with the arrest of 10 members of a Kerala-based gang linked to Kodali Sreedharan, who is notorious for robbing hawala operators on highways.
The arrested are Rajiv PK, 48, Vishnulal, 26, Sanal TC, 34, Akhil, 28, Jaseen Faris, 28, Sanaf P, 33, Sameer S, 31, Sainulla Habidi, 21, Shafeeq AP and Ramsheed alias Muttaf, 25. Police seized Rs 9.7 lakh and two sports utility vehicles from them.
Superintendent of police (Bengaluru Rural) K Vamsi Krishna said Sreedharan was the main suspect and he’s still at large. Cops suspect the remaining Rs 90 lakh is with Sreedharan.
The robbery took place in the early hours of March 11 when the car-borne gang intercepted a vehicle with five employees of a Nagercoil-based private finance firm when they were driving near NICE Road junction at Madanayakanahalli on the outskirts of Bengaluru. The private firm employees were on their way back to Nagercoil after visiting Hubballi and other places on March 8 to collect money from customers. When they reached the outskirts of Madanayakanahalli at 5.50am with Rs 1 crore kept in a box, a gang of seven armed men arrived in a car and attacked them.
J Franklin, the firm’s senior accountant, stated in his complaint: “The miscreants attacked our car with machetes, rods and smashed the glasses. Pulling us out, they snatched the cash and our mobile phones. They drove away with their car as well as ours.”
Preliminary investigations revealed the attackers had collected vital information about the victims who visited Hubballi to collect money from the gold traders. They were following them from Hubballi till Bengaluru.
Two special teams were formed under Lakshmi Ganesh, additional superintendent of police. KC Gautam, DySP (Nelamangala sub-division) and Manjunath BS, Madanayakanahalli police inspector, led the teams. They found the accused had abandoned the victims’ car near Bellur and drove towards Kerala.
Police identified the vehicle in which the suspect came and attacked the victims. The car had a Karnataka registration number and, during verification of CCTV footage along the route, it was found that the car crossed Chamarajanagar district and entered Tamil Nadu. But during verification of footage along the route in Tamil Nadu, the car sported a different number plate — that of a Kerala registration number. “We realised that the accused had changed the number plate after crossing Karnataka border,” a cop said. The team checked over 250 CCTV cameras till Ernakulam in Kerala but could not track the accused.
It was then that the cops stumbled upon something interesting: They noticed that the car had moved in the FASTag lane through all the toll plazas though it sported different number plates. “We started sourcing the FASTag details of the vehicle and landed at the doorstep of the accused,” another officer said.
