CHENNAI: After facing a huge loss in online trading, which left him saddled with a sizeable debt, a 46-year-old project manager with an IT company took to chain-snatching to pay off his loans – only to be caught by the public, who gave him a sound thrashing before handing him over to the police in Tambaram.

Bhuvaneswari, a 24-year-old MBA graduate from Chitlapakkam near Tambaram, has been working at a private finance company in Tambaram for the past month. The incident happened on Thursday evening, when she was returning from work by bus and got down at Sanatorium.

As she was walking towards Chitlapakkam through the Sanatorium foot overbridge, she noticed several elderly, destitute people sitting there. Taking pity over their condition, she distributed laddus that she had bought.

At that moment, an unidentified man approached her, attacked her with pepper spray on her face and attempted to snatch the gold chain she was wearing. Despite being shocked by the attack, Bhuvaneswari raised an alarm. Hearing her cries, the public rushed to her rescue, caught the man, and thrashed him before handing him over to the Tambaram police.

During interrogation, the police identified the accused as Kuppusamy (46), a resident of Pammal near Pallavaram, who was working as a project manager at a private IT firm on Old Mahabalipuram Road. During their investigations, the police found that Kuppusamy had lost a large amount of money in online trading and was struggling with mounting debts.

To clear his liabilities, he had even sold his house in Pammal, worth around Rs 60 lakh. However, he was unable to settle his debt fully.

Unable to meet his financial commitments, he decided to commit chain-snatching in an attempt to raise money to repay his loans. The Tambaram police arrested Kuppusamy and are continuing their investigation.