Chennai: After a filmi-style chase for over four kilometers, Tamil Nadu police on Friday seized a container truck loaded with Rs 65 lakh in cash stolen from several ATMs in Kerala in the wee hours, even as it killed a suspect in an “encounter” following an alleged attempted by him and his team to “attack” the men in khaki in Namakkal district.
Five persons, all from Haryana, who were travelling in the truck have been taken into custody, while one among them has been rushed to Coimbatore for treatment of injuries sustained in the counter-attack by the police.
The gang had targeted three ATMs in Thrissur in Kerala in the wee hours of Friday and fled in a car but they later shifted to a container truck along with the four-wheeler they had driven, to escape from the police net.
Initial investigations, according to police, revealed that the six-member gang targeted ATMs of State Bank of India (SBI) by locating them using Google Maps and using equipment like gas cutters to break into the machines.
Namakkal District police swing into action after a tip-off from their counterparts in Kerala that a container truck from the state might travel via Tamil Nadu. A police team intercepted a container truck on the Bengaluru-Kochi Highway near Komarapalayam but the driver not just refused to stop but drove the vehicle in a reckless manner, damaging two wheelers and a car, which was dragged for about 750 metres.
E S Uma, Deputy Inspector General of Police (Salem), told reporters that the Namakkal police team pursued the gang and the truck for over 4 kms and finally managed to stop the vehicle. “That is when the driver and another person began pelting stones and attempted to attack the police with weapons which they had hidden in the vehicle. We had no option but to shoot one person, identified as Juman in his 40s, in his back,” Uma added.
Asked whether the killing could have been avoided, the senior police officer said the police men led by inspector Thavamani and sub-inspector Ranjith resorted to firing only in “self-defence.”
“One suspect was hit by a bullet. We could capture all the remaining five suspects,” Uma said.
A team from Kerala Police also inspected the “encounter” spot and were given access to the suspects arrested by their Tamil Nadu counterparts.
She also said the suspects, during the preliminary enquiry, confessed to them that they targeted SBI ATMs as they believed those machines “always had cash.”
“They told us that they would locate the ATMs using Google Maps and target them randomly. They always chose SBI ATMs and used gas cutters to break into them,” the officer said, adding that the gang sprayed paint on security cameras to avoid getting caught.