Serial burglary gang nabbed in city, stolen goods, vehicles seized

According to police, the leader of the gang was identified as 36-year-old S Syed Sarfraz Nawaz. He is a murder accused and has been detained under the Goondas Act seven times on burglary charges. He, along with M Mohammed Sherin (30) of Kolathur and K Raja (33) of Korattur, were remanded in judicial custody on Monday.

After 31 shops were burgled in 17 police station limits including Royapettah, Anna Nagar, Mylapore and Selaiyur, based on the evidence collected, police found that the same gang was involved all the heists.

Immediately, a special team was formed to nab the gang. Since the trail of CCTV footage revealed that the vehicles used by the burglars reached Korattur, the special teams camped there to monitor the vehicles in the area. Police officers identified the vehicles used in the heists in the locality on Sunday night.

They followed the vehicles and secured them when they stopped the near a shop to loot it.

Explaining their modus operandi, police said that the gang would identify the potential shops to loot in the morning and carry out the burglary in the night hours, with help of two cars and a truck.

They only target the shops in the ground floor as it would be easy to hide the shop by parking the vehicles in front of it. After filling the cab with stolen articles, they would go to Syed Sarfraz Nawaz’s house.

From there they would take them to different places and sell the goods at a cheaper price. It is said that Syed Sarfraz Nawaz recently booked a big truck to transport the stolen goods but was caught by police. Sources also said the main accused used to run a showroom with the burgled products near Arakkonam, but it was sealed by the police. Mohammed Sherin is Syed Sarfraz Nawaz’s brother-in-law and Raja is his longterm accomplice, who were operating together for more than 12 years, said police.