It was Dhoom sans the bikes and babes. Sanjay Gadhvi’s thriller shot a real-life take in Malappuram in Kerala when a group of criminals burrowed their way into a bank on New Year’s Eve. Two months later, however, police have caught four of the accused and recovered most of the Rs8-crore loot in an equally dramatic operation.
If Jaison, the mastermind, was inspired by Kabir (the dashing thief played by John Abraham), there were 27 Jais (the supercop played by Abhishek Bachchan) after him. Malappuram superintendent of police P Vijayan led his men on the culprits’ trail, armed with an innovative strategy and hi-tech investigation methods.
Additional director general of police KS Jangpangi, briefing reporters about the arrests in Malappuram on Thursday, said this is a milestone in the police records. “It is a classic case of teamwork. We also couldn’t have done it without good leadership,” he said. He added the theft was the biggest in the history of the state.
On the morning of January 1, the staff of the South Malabar Grameen Bank in Chelembra was shocked to see the floor cracked open from below and the locker poorer by Rs7.5 crore worth of gold and Rs25 lakh cash. The daredevilry was attributed to a mysterious man who had rented the floor below the bank in the guise of renovating it as a restaurant. “There were no weapons used to make the manhole and the gang left very scant evidence,” Jangpangi said. Police relied on a sketch of a man called Babu in the initial phase of the investigation. Jaison aka Joseph has an uncanny resemblance to the sketch made by the police team from descriptions given by locals.
