During 1970-72, a gang, posing as Customs officers, kidnapped and murdered seven gold merchants and hawala operators after whisking them away in the name of inquiry from lodges in Chennai. The Bollywood hit Special 26 was based on the 1987 Opera House heist in Mumbai. The Akshay Kumar-starrer, released in 2013, was about a gang of conmen posing as CBI or Income Tax officers and targetting gold merchants in different parts of the country in the late 1980s.
A decade before these incidents, Tamil Nadu witnessed a series of gruesome murders involving a gang posing as Customs officials. The murders, which came to be known as ‘visha oosi’ (poisonous injection) cases, occurred during 1970-72 in Madras. The gang gathered intelligence from room-boys of lodges around Chennai Central where frequent travellers, hawala operators, and gold merchants stayed. After identifying the target, the suspects would conduct a raid, claiming to be Customs officials, and whisk the victim away in a car.
