Four complaints have been lodged back-to-back at the Crime section of Velacheri police station regarding the theft of mobile phones, laptops and gadgets from four localities in the neighbourhood. With CCTV cameras installed at every nook and corner, the residents themselves have a suspect at hand.
The Tansi Nagar Welfare Association has handed over to the police the consolidated CCTV footage showing a well-dressed woman entering the places from where the items were stolen.
Speaking to News Today, Tansi Nagar Welfare Association Secretary M Balakrishnan said, “She first targeted a ladies hostel on 21 Street, Tansi Nagar, a few weeks ago. She went there on the pretext of checking out a room in the absence of the warden. Although the cook had offered to accompany her, she declined. The inmates of the room were fast asleep and grabbing the opportunity she stole three phones from there.” There is CCTV footage of the woman entering and leaving the hostel building, informed the secretary.
On 24 February, at 6 am, she was once again captured on a CCTV camera at 19 Street in Tansi Nagar. The same day, police received a complaint from a house occupied by bachelors that laptops and a mobile phone had gone missing. And apart from that, families from Sarathy Nagar and Balamurugan Nagar also lodged complaints on the very same day.
When the residents consolidated the CCTV footage, the suspect could be seen standing in front of the gates of several residential buildings, and also entering and exiting some of them.
“What is most surprising is that she seems like an educated, decent-looking woman in good clothes, carrying a handbag and a mobile phone,” said Balakrishnan. The police have assured the residents that they would nab the culprit at the earliest.