Cops hunt for gangsters’ secrets in seized phones

The data containing in all the phones are expected to give vital information about their network in the city and also neighbouring districts

“We value it more than men we arrested. There is always limitation in extracting information from the arrested men. But extracting data from their phones is easier,” noted an officer, adding that the police would be sending the phones to computer labs to extract data. Most of the phones seized were high-end ones, including iPhones. Police have taken out the SIM and memory cards from many phones and are collecting contact details from it.

“As many of them were found using iphones, we are not being able to unlock to extract data. Such phones are being sent to the cyber lab,” disclosed a police official.

However, sources noted that Choolaimedu Binu, whose birthday bash was gate-crashed by the police, never used mobile phone. He had been staying away from using mobile phone. Even his second in command does not use a mobile phone. “They usually use somebody else’s phone to communicate,” police sources noted. 

Binu, 50, who left his Choolaimedu hub years ago, has his third wife staying in Mangadu, where he hardly visits. In the recent years, police were sure about his whereabouts as he was under treatment in Kerala. Once a karate exponent, Binu had been undergoing a lot of health problems, including injuries in the legs, diabetes and other complications. Though police said he had 15 serious cases against him, he had managed to secure acquittal in most of them after prosecution witnesses turned hostile. He considers CD Mani and Arumbakkam Radhakrishnan as his rivals. Radhakrishnan was his partner in crime, but they separated after he failed to share the loot when Binu went to jail few years ago.