Chennai: Onec upon a time he was an icon of the police Idol Wing. Now, Kader Batcha is a fugitive wanted by the same wing. He had cracked many cases when he was an inspector in the wing and now sleuths are hunting for him, 9 years after he committed a robbery in Aruppukottai Madurai.
Idol Wing officials on Wednesday said that DSP Kader Batcha, wanted in connection with the robbery of idols, is absconding. Batcha, now serving the district crime branch unit of Thiruvallur district police, has gone on medical leave and his whereabouts are not immediately known, sources said. "A team has gone to Madurai and another team is in Kerala looking for him," an official said on Wednesday night.
The Idol Wing sleuths had on Monday arrested special sub-inspector N Subburaj, attached to the Koyambedu police station for allegedly robbing three idols from a man in Madurai at gunpoint with the help of Batcha when both were working in the Idol Wing in 2008. The duo threatened and assaulted two men who had stumbled upon the ancient idols in Madurai while ploughing the land.
“Kader Batcha was a hero when he was working in Idol Wing. He had cracked many cases and his knowledge about temples and idols was outstanding.
Nobody expected him to be a black sheep there,” an old timer in the Idol Wing unit of the Economic Offence Wing of TN police said.
After robbing the idols from Madurai, he and Subburaj brought three idols — Siva- Parvathy and Amman — to Chennai and sold two idols for '25 lakh to city dealer Dheenadayalan who was a well-known art dealer then.
“It looks like Kader Batcha knew Dheenadayalan from 2005 and his illegal activities of smuggling out antique idols. So he used that contact to sell the idols of Siva - Parvathy which reached Subash Kapoor's gallery in Manhattan within a few weeks. A buyer from Bangkok purchased it from there,” a police official said.
When the inspector general of police, Idol Wing, AG Pon Manickavel came to know about the involvement of the policemen who had earlier worked in the unit, an FIR was registered and action initiated against the dirty cops.
