‘Master laptop thief’ lands in police net

TRICHY: Police on Friday arrested R Muthuraman, 40, from

Ramji Nagar

in connection with the theft of 10 laptops in the city.

The accused used to steal the laptops from passengers at bus stops or on board the buses. The value of the laptops ranged from Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000.

The arrest comes following complaints of laptop thefts received between March 5 and 8.

While the Session’s court police station and the Cantonment crime police station received three complaints each, two cases were filed in K K Nagar police station one in Edamalaipatti Pudhur.

Initially, police had no clue about the accused in the nine cases in which 10 laptops were stolen.

Police said the victims lost their laptops at the Central bus stand, court bus stop,

Karumandapam

bus stop, Kattur and Subramaniapuram.

Police investigation to crack the series of incidents yielded results with the arrest of Muthuraman.

“He was involved in the theft of laptops for the past 15 years here and some other states. The accused was adept at lifting the laptops from passengers on long distance route buses and escape,” said sub-inspector of police T Karunakaran.

The modus operandi of the accused was to board a Trichy to Bengaluru bus from Trichy Central bus stand and get down with three to four laptops at the next stopping, for instance, Namakkal.

He will again get into a bus towards Trichy and lift the laptops before getting down at No 1 Toll gate area.

As soon as he flees the scene with the laptop, he would hand them over to a receiver in Ramji Nagar, following which the entire data will be erased from the laptops before selling them to agents in Kerala and some other states.

Some of the agents in Trichy were also involved in buying the stolen laptops.

“They can easily sell off the laptops in the black market. So, they target the laptops. Passengers should keep an eye on their belongings,” inspector of Cantonment police, crime, R Sahaya Anbarasu said.

So far, police were able to recover Rs 2 lakh cash from Muthuraman which he had received from the laptop sale. The recovered cash will be distributed among the victims.