3 try to sell iron as iridium, cheat trader of Rs 80 lakh

The accused have been identified as Kumar (44) of Sholinganallur, Sujith (28) of Kottayam in Kerala and Srinivasan (35) of Pallikaranai. They all hail from Thoothukudi district and are into real estate business, said police. 

Kumar is a friend of the complainant, Anandan (45), a resident of Royapettah, who runs a mechanical spare parts showroom on Gowdia Mutt Road. Kumar had already cheated Anandhan in a similar fashion one and a half year back but he did not approach the police then. Police sources said that Kumar approached Anandan for the second time saying he wanted to ‘pay back’ for his previous error and promised that he would buy him iridium worth Rs 50 crore for just Rs 5 crore. 

To make quick money, Anandan pledged his house and gave Rs 80 lakh to the trio as advance. However, he did not get the material as promised. When he asked the trio to return his money, they allegedly threatened him. So, with no option left, Anandan approached police, who came up with a plan to trap the trio. 

Anandan contacted Kumar over phone and told him that he has Rs 5 crore ready. He also urged him to hand over the iridium at the earliest. Believing him, the three men reached Anandan’s house on Wednesday and police who waited there surrounded the trio when they tried to pass on a heavy metal plate to Anandan. On examination, the heavy metal, weighing over 25 kg was found to be just iron. 

A sum of Rs 40 lakh was recovered from them. In the investigation, police found out that one of the accused Sujith is a self-proclaimed chemist. Police said that Anandan will also be questioned to find out why he wanted to buy iridium. Craze for iridium Not many have seen the much-in-demand iridium, though people have lost crores of rupees for the ‘magical’ element, said police. 

Various theories have been floated about the origin of iridium and one of them is that it is sourced from temple kalasams. The iridium is very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group, credited to being the second densest element.