Chennai cops to join AP team in grilling Iranian gang

Highly-placed sources in city police told DTNext that Chennai police had requested the Tirupati police to let Chennai police also interrogate them before remand, however, it could not be done. However, a special crime team from the city police would go to Tirupati on Tuesday and try to interrogate the accused after applying for a police custody. 

The gang had been active in Chennai after a long break and had been involved in as many as 6 cases of attention diversion. These men pose as policemen and instruct victims not to wear gold ornaments due to increase in crimes in the area and ask them to bundle the jewels in a paper and take that home. Police, who managed to get the pictures of the accused and share that with all beat officers in the city. 

“When they came to know that their pictures have been circulated and there is a chance of them being arrested, they seemed to have shifted their area to Tirupati, which is near to Chennai,” a senior police official said. City police sources said there is another gang from Nagpur, which is also notorious for attention diversion crimes. 

This gang also operates across South India, the officer added. The city police had arrested seven of the gang members in 2013, when they had a free run in the city and put them behind bars. Most of these gang members came out of the prison and became active once again.