Crime time: The 46-kg gold heist

Shiv Kumar in Mumbai & Suresh Dharur in Hyderabad

It runs like a crime thriller. Sunday June 18. A joint team from the Mumbai Crime Branch and the special task force of the Cyberabad (Hyderabad) police knocked the doors of a run-down flat in Mumbai’s Dharavi. It is the beginning of the end of a six-month hunt for the mastermind of one of the biggest heists in recent times.

In Akshay Kumar-starrer Special 26, a team of cons posing as CBI officers raids a jewellery shop. The robbers, who pulled off the biggest gold heist in the recent memory at Hyderabad’s Muthoot Finance office, adopted a similar tactic. Read on. 

Dec 28, 2016. 9 am. The Ramachandrapuram branch of Muthoot Finance office had just opened. A black Scorpio comes to a screeching halt near the main entrance. Five smartly-dressed armed men emerge and briskly walk into the building. They pull out fake ID cards from their pockets, and tell the staff they were from the CBI and were conducting the raid based on a tip-off about certain irregularities in the branch. They said they wanted to check the records to investigate certain transactions post-demonetization.

“They simply collected 42 kg gold jewellery and stuffed it into their bags. They walked out after locking the employees in the bathroom,” a police officer from the Cyberabad police commissionerate said.

The group had conducted a recce of the area on December 23, for which they used a Scorpio and a bike, according to information gathered from the CCTV footages of the area. The vehicles used had their numbers constantly changed, first they sported Maharashtra registration, then a Karnataka registration and finally they used an Andhra Pradesh number on the day of the crime. After the heist, they left the city by train, the police said.

Fast-forward to June 18: Plainclothesmen take up position in and around a building housing former slum dwellers of India’s biggest shanty colony in Dharavi, Mumbai. Three women police constables posing as civic workers knock the door of a flat. Shortly after a man opens the door, members of the Telangana and Mumbai police force, waiting in the corridor, force their way in and overpower the occupant of the flat.

Sundar Rajaratnam Kangalla, a former member of the Chhotta Rajan gang with a history of petty crimes, was finally caught after a chase that spanned through several states. The Mumbai police say Sundar didn’t take long to reveal the whereabouts of his wife and accomplice Radha who was holed up in a dingy flat at Chunabhatti in south-central Mumbai.

The Mumbai police say the members of the gang came together during their stint in jail for various crimes.  The Hyderabad police’s breakthrough came when they identified Vijay Kumar, a thief with a criminal record, who was riding his own bike as an escort to the gang’s getaway vehicle. Interrogation of Kumar’s close associates revealed the identities of other members of the gang who were picked up from different places throughout this year, said Mumbai police.

Sundar and his wife were elusive as they spent more than three months. “They lived in good hotels and spent money lavishly,” a crime branch officer said. The police say Sundar was also careful not to use his mobile phone while travelling. He often used phones belonging to others to escape detection.

At the time of their arrest, only 2.25 kg gold was recovered from Sundar and his wife. Another 4.5 kgs were recovered from the house of Mudhang. Much of the booty had been sold to different jewellers in various places, police said. Police say, the gang had carried out similar heists in the past though the loot was much smaller.