A 35-year-old man was arrested by the police on Friday on the charge of stealing 50 sovereigns of gold jewellery from his neighbour’s house in Ram Sait Nagar near Thorapadi in Vellore town.
Police said the suspect S. Venkatesan, who works at a branch of a public sector bank in Somasipadi village near Tiruvannamalai town, and K. Balaji, 42, a software professional, were neighbours in Ram Sait Nagar for many years. Mr. Balaji lives with his wife, B. Mekala Priya, a government school teacher, in a single-storey house.
On September 3, when Ms. Priya returned home from school in the evening, she saw the cupboard in the bedroom damaged and the gold jewellery missing. The bedroom was sprinkled with chilli powder. She, immediately alerted Balaji, who informed the Bagayam police.
A police team with sniffer dogs and fingerprint experts reached the spot and enquired about the incident. The Superintendent of Police (SP), Vellore, N. Manivanan, formed two special teams to investigate the case.
During the investigation, police found easy entry to the bedroom from the rear grille gate of the house. No damage to the lock in the gate was also noticed. Also, the CCTV footage in the area was analysed.
As a neighbour, the suspect Venkatesan was also enquired by the police. However, the police were not satisfied with the answers given by him. Two factors, the police said, made them to narrow down on him.
Firstly, Venketasan apparently told the police that he had gone to the grocery shop near his house around 9 a.m. on that day. However, the police found that he was at home till 10.30 a.m. Secondly, he told the police that after returning from the grocery shop, he went to the terrace to clean the water tank. But when the police checked the tank, there were no signs of the tank having been cleaned. Finally when the police analysed the CCTV footage in the grocery shop, they found Venkatesan was picking up a few chilli-powder sachets from the store.
When confronted with the findings, Venketasan confessed to the crime. He told police that he kept the stolen valuables in the locker of the bank so that no one would doubt his involvement in the crime. Police recovered the stolen items from the locker. Venketasan was arrested and lodged in the Central Prison in Vellore, the police said.
