CHENNAI: The city police have arrested a woman, a career criminal, who invited herself into locked homes and decamped with valuables, courtesy of the ill-advised, yet all-pervasive habit among residents placing their home keys inside shoes, flower pots, and under doormats.
The accused, Indumathi (35) of Ocheri, Ranipet, frequently travelled to Chennai and roamed around neighbourhoods looking for locked houses.
Sembium police arrested her based on a complaint from S Sugumaran (66), a resident of Venkataraman Street, Perambur.
On Tuesday (February 10), he went to his workshop after locking the house, leaving the keys inside the shoes outside the door. When he returned, he found the door open and Rs 4,000 cash and silver articles missing.
Police said that she was also involved in a similar theft at another house on Ramchandran Street, and Indumathi has pending criminal cases against her at Arakkonam, Polur (Tiruvannamalai), Madhuravoyal (Chennai), and Perumbakkam (Tambaram) police stations.
Police recovered Rs 7,000 cash and silver articles stolen from the two houses. She was produced before a magistrate and remanded in judicial custody.
Around seven months ago, Kumaran Nagar Police had arrested another accused, a Bengaluru-based woman who used the same modus operandi. The accused, B Jayanthi, who was five months pregnant at the time of her arrest, frequently travelled from Bengaluru to Chennai by train and then took the suburban railway line and got down at one of the stations, like Mambalam, Saidapet, targeted locked houses and escaped with whatever she got, police said.