Chennai police gun down five suspected bank robbers

February 23, 2012

gun_Feb23Chennai, February 23: Five men suspected to be behind two bank robberies in Chennai in the last one month were killed in a gun battle with the city police atVelachery in the wee hours of Thursday.

Police commissioner J K Tripathy said the gun battle lasted for 15 minutes, from 1am to 1.15am, leaving two police inspectors injured and all the five suspects dead. The suspects were identified as Chandrika Rey from West Bengal, and Vinod Kumar, Vinay Prasad, Abhay Kumar and Harish Kumar from Bihar. Two of them are former students of an engineering college in the city suburbs. Police recovered five guns and bundles of cash from the suspects.

Two days after the gang struck a branch of Indian Overseas Bank in Keelkattalai on Monday, city police commissioner J K Tripathy had held a press conference on Wednesday to release a video of a suspect allegedly doing a recce at a nationalised bank. "With people's cooperation, we will nab them soon," he had said.

Chennai went to sleep with that reassurance, and woke up to the tale of a bloody encounter. Tripathy said on Thursday that his team got a tip-off around midnight about the suspects staying on the ground floor of a three-storey house on A L Mudali Street in Velachery. "We immediately sent a team of 14 led by deputy commissioner of police (Adyar) M Sudhakar and two assistant commissioners Kannan (Madipakkam) and Manickavel (Guindy)," the commissioner said.

The team surrounded the house and three police inspectors took position by the windows, while three other inspectors targeted the main door of the house. The commissioner said the suspects opened fire at the police team at 1am, injuring inspectors P Ravi (Teynampet) and Christian Jayasil (Thoraipakkam). The police team broke open the window and the door and opened fire at the suspects. The gun battle left the suspects badly injured. They were rushed to the Government General Hospital, where the doctors declared them dead on arrival. The injured inspectors were admitted to the Government Royapettah Hospital.

Police sources said they got information from a person, who didn't want to reveal his identity, about the robbers. "After seeing the suspect's photograph released by the police commissioner on Wednesday, the informer claimed that the suspect was staying at his relative's house on A L Mudali Street, Nethaji Road near the Tamil Nadu Housing Board quarters in Velachery," a source said.

Police sources said the robbers stayed in the house since last December after paying an advance of Rs 20,000. Though the incident happened in a residential area, no one in the neighbourhood appeared to know what had happened. Reporters who reached the spot soon after the incident were kept at bay till 5.45am.

Finally, when they were let in, the suspects' 'den' turned out to be a 300 sqft portion of a house, with a bedroom, a hall, a bathroom and a kitchen. Among the blood-soaked belongings of the suspects was a red, black and white checked shirt one of the suspects was seen wearing in the video clip released by the police commissioner hardly 10 hours before the gun battle. The suspect, the police identified, was Vinod Kumar, doing a recce at a nationalised bank.

Three more portions of the house were occupied by families. Police are questioning the house owners, brothers Deivendran and Murugan. As the court has directed a magistrate probe should be conducted in the police encounters, police have informed the chief metropolitan magistrate about the incident.


About a month before the gang struck the IOB branch at Keelkattalai, a branch of Bank of Baroda was robbed on January 23 last. The robbers took away Rs 19 lakh from BoB and Rs 14 lakh from IOB in a swift operation by holding the bank staffs and customers at gunpoint.


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Agencies
March 26,2020

Puducherry,Mar 26: Congress legislator from Kamaraj Nagar constituency John Kumar has been booked on charges of violating lock-down rules, Lt Governor Kiran Bedi said on Thursday.

In a Whats app posting she further said that an FIR has been registered under the Disaster management Act.

She stated John Kumar in an irresponsible manner allowed more than 200 people to gather outside his house and distributed doles personally when lock down was enforced in the country.

A criminal case has been registered against him for blatant violation of law despite mass information and media messages.Instead of following the law, he chose to violate it,she further stated.

The LG added that as per the ground report by IGP Surendra Yadav, there was perceptible improvement in enforcement of lock down and public were aware and cooperative.Vehicles carrying essential supplies and personnel were moving and every day is an improvement.

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Agencies
March 24,2020

Kochi, Mar 24: A 54-year-old domestic passenger was arrested at the airport here for allegedly refusing to follow instructions given by doctorsfor prevention of the spread of novel coronavirus, police said here on Tuesday.

Lami Arackal from Ernakulam, who landed from Chennai at the Cochin International Airport at Nedumbassery on Monday night, was arrested based on a complaint from health officials, they said.

He was, however, later released on bail.

Arackal allegedly refused to wear mask and follow other instructions to be observed by the passengers coming from other states as part of the measures to check COVID-19 spread.

He also allegedly misbehaved with the medical officers, police said.

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News Network
May 28,2020

Hyderabad, MAY 28: A three-year-old boy who accidentally fell into a newly drilled open borewell in Telangana's Medak district was found dead in the early hours of Thursday, police said.

The kid's body was retrieved at around 4 am after a nearly 10 hours' long rescue operation involving different agencies, they said.

"He died a while before we evacuated him, most likely due to the mud that covered him from the top sealing off necessary oxygen supply, " Medak District Superintendent of Police Chandana Deepti told PTI.

The boy had accidentally slipped into the 120- feet borewell at around 5 pm on Wednesday in an agricultural field located in Papannapet mandal of the district when he was walking with his grandfather and father, police earlier said.

As part of rescue efforts, a parallel trench was dug along the borewell hole with the help of earth excavating machines and oxygen was supplied into it, but the efforts went in vain as the boy's body was found stuck at a depth of around 25 feet, the police said.

Apart from the police, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel were also involved in the rescue operation.

The borewell into which the child fell was one among the three dug by the family since Tuesday night to try and find water for their fields. But none of them yielded any water, police had said.

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