Even as one of its efficient inspectors Periyapandian fell to the bullets fired by thugs during an operation in Rajasthan on Wednesday, cops of Tamil Nadu Police pulled off a coup of sort on Thursday by arresting an eight-member team specialised in breaking open Automated Teller Machines.
What made the mission unique was the deployment of helicams/drones to locate three members of the gang who had given the police a hot chase in the early hours of Thursday. It all began in the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday in the districts of Namakkal and Salem. The gang of ATM busters was composed of “specialist robbers” from the States of Rajasthan, Haryana, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Though their effort to robe an ATM in Madurai met with failure, the gang reached Coimbatore in search of unguarded money dispensing machines. They came across two ATMs in a Coimbatore suburb which were owned by private sector banks. In an operation which may eclipse the imagination of the best of bollywood film makers, the gang struck twice on December 10 and made it off with Rs 30.05 lakh.
The gang had three vehicles at their disposal, two cars bearing Haryana and Delhi registration and a mini-lorry with Rajasthan registration. The last named was the operational vehicle which carried gas cutters and all modern gadgets required for the Operation ATM.
They select only unguarded ATMS, enter them unnoticed by anybody and deactivate the surveillance cameras by spraying them with soap foam. One of them would pull down the shutters and then they cut open the machine with the gas cutter.
On Wednesday night they were on their way back to the native places when the special team of cops which were on hot pursuit of the ATM busters came across the three vehicles in three locations. The first was the car with Haryana registration which sped off when asked to stop by the police near a toll plaza in Namakkal district. The police team followed the car which was ferrying three members of the gang. When the gang members saw the police vehicle following them was closing in, they left the car and escaped to the nearby village under the cover of darkness. At daybreak the cops mobilised the helicams from nearby private studios and put them into service.
The helicams pinpointed the exact hiding places of the gang members. One was sitting atop a tree while the other two were nabbed from nearby bushes. With the arrest of the three, it became easy for the police to catch hold of the remaining five from two different locations. “We could make a breakthrough thanks to a mobile phone call made by one of the gang members immediately after the robbing of the ATMs,” said a member of the special team.