Dumped by medico girl, man steals laptops from medical colleges across country for 'revenge'

CHENNAI: A 25-year-old man, whose only target was laptops of medical students for which he has travelled the country cris-cross to steal them from government medical colleges and hostels, has been arrested by Washermenpet police.

The reason for his 'love' for laptops that too of medical students is that his girlfriend, a medical student, snapped relationship with him during college days, according to police.

The accused K Tamilselvan of Tiruvarur district is a graduate in economics from an university in Delhi, but he started stealing the laptops even before graduation, said police.

Explaining his modus operandi, inspector Yamuna said that Tamilselvan would visit medical colleges wearing a white coat and a fake ID card to avoid suspicion. "He would walk in to the hostels and steal students' laptops from room which are left open. He sells the laptops to random persons or online after reinstalling the OS to make a quick buck," said the inspector.

Medical colleges at Jam Nagar in Gujarat, Kannur in Kerala, Delhi, Bengaluru in Karnataka, Hyderabad in Telangana, Kakinada and Visakhapatnam in Andhra, Kolkata in West Bengal, Bhuvaneshwar in Odissa, Jaipur in Rajasthan are some of the places where Tamilselvan had carried out his loot and had been arrested in Kerala and Gujarat.

In the city, he has stolen laptops from the hostels of Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, Kilpauk Medical College Hospital, Government Stanley Hospital, said police.

While two laptops went missing from the Government Stanley Hospital in February, two more laptops of second-year MBBS students went missing from the hostel on Friday.

Washermenpet police who registered a case identified the suspect with the help of CCTV footage. On Saturday, the man returned to the hospital around the same time on Saturday, he was secured and identified as Tamilselvan. Police searched his rented house in Semmanchery and seized 31 laptops. He was remanded in judicial custody on Saturday.

Police suspect the role of another person behind Tamilselvan and are planning to take him into custody for interrogation.