5 serial robbers held at Maraimalai Nagar

The police said that all the accused — J Kishore (25), Z Ajmir (19), N Vitish Kumar (21), J Anush (20) and J Kamal Prakash (18) — were from Ranganathapuram in Tambaram and were traced using mobile phone tower location. Kishore already has several robbery cases registered against him. The police also seized five bikes, three laptops, and six smartphones, face masks along with 2kg ganjafrom them.

The Maraimalai Nagar police received multiple complaints that a gang of five has been targeting students and bachelors in the locality. The gang would barge into their houses at midnight, attack them and rob their valuables at knifepoint.

The police could not find CCTV cameras near the places where the gang would strike so they began to trace cell phones which were active in the area during the time of the robbery.

Based on their mobile phone tower signals, the police traced all five of the accused and found out that they were from Ramanathapuram.

Sources said that a few policemen in plainclothes had been monitoring the accused and they found that the five youngsters had been robbing houses every two days. The police also uncovered their modus operandi. The accused would sell ganja to college students and then befriend them to know their address, among other details. They would mostly target students and bachelors who live alone.

Around midnight on Friday, the gang went to Katankulathur railway station to carry out another robbery when they were arrested.