MADURAI: City police on Friday intensified the investigation into the Rs 21-crore Tanishq showroom robbery in Madurai and raided a suspect's house in Palanganatham. The raid followed CCTV footage that allegedly showed a man posing as a customer visiting the showroom three times before the robbery. City Police Commissioner S Rajendran said no arrest has been made so far.
A police source said the suspect, identified as Nishanth (25), was not at home when the team searched the house for nearly three hours. No jewellery was found, the source said, adding that the suspect is a youth who works as a YouTuber and a bike-taxi driver.
CCTV footage also suggests that the burglar escaped on a scooter after committing the crime, police said. “The footage shows an unidentified man moving fast along the road adjacent to the showroom around 3.34 am. The time sequence matches the time of the crime, when the burglar spent nearly an hour picking the valuables displayed in the showcases and packing them into a duffel bag and a trolley bag with a backpack before leaving the premises,” said a senior police officer.
The scooter did not pass through Palanganatham, where police are conducting the inquiry, the source said. Rajendran said no other vehicle was seen moving on the street at that time.
Before the robbery, the man visited the showroom three times, wearing a cap and keeping one hand bandaged, the source said. He changed his clothes on different visits but wore a cap of the same colour. He pretended to examine and admire the jewellery like an ordinary customer and is believed to have identified the ornaments he intended to steal.
The CCTV footage also helped police establish that the masked man climbed the building using the scaffolding erected at the rear and reached the third floor on November 5, during a trial run. He apparently did not gain entry into the building that day, Rajendran said.
The trial run is believed to have helped the burglar, who is suspected to have acted alone, identify points of entry into the showroom. In the early hours of November 12, he entered through a small door meant for lift maintenance and climbed down a rope used for the lift to reach the showroom on the first floor, above the ground-level parking area.
“Many thefts with a similar modus operandi have occurred in various places in Tamil Nadu, including at Joyalukkas Jewellery in Coimbatore and Lalithaa Jewellery in Tiruchy. Burglars have also carried out such thefts in major cities such as New Delhi and Bengaluru,” the Commissioner said.
“We are collecting the details of all thieves who follow a similar modus operandi and checking their whereabouts. The burglar who committed the crime could be either from within the state or from another part of the country. We can’t rule out any possibility at this juncture,” Rajendran said.