Kerala cops make handbook on village of thieves

For the police in Kerala, Panavadali Chatram in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu has been ringing alarm bells for quite sometime now. Circle inspector of Thrissur West police station Shahul Hameed said that they had unearthed close to 100 incidents in Kerala involving thieves from this village. The modus operandi of the robbers was to approach houses seeking old and useless household goods. When the male members of the gang bargained with the house-owner, women entered the house unnoticed and decamped with valuables.

Though this has been the general procedure, there has been numerous break-ins, temple thefts and looting. Investigations have led the police to the village several times. Some had even turned to money-lending business loaning out lakhs of rupees from their earnings.

The 50-page handbook throws light on the regular thieves, and there are dozens of them, who have been frequenting houses in the state. It has their photographs, their history and even photographs of the impressive houses they have built back home. Thieves who have already made a name for themselves included men and women many of whom have now been caught with help from the police in Tirunelveli. Some of the famous names listed in the book are Chellathai, Thankathai and Selvi.

According to the police, the groups lived among 600 families in an area of 250 acres in the village. The village council and police administration in Tirunelveli have now volunteered to isolate these elements and turn them over to the police in Kerala wherever necessary.

 “Since they have been committing robbery from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasargod, we decided that a handbook could come in handy for our colleagues in all police stations,’’ said Hameed. The handbook is being brought out by the special team which probed the Thriprayar temple theft case and the draft of the book has been submitted to the DGP.