Chennai thief steals during night out at EA

Chennai: A 33-year-old suspect from Kerala was arrested on Tuesday after he used one of the iPhones he had stolen on a stealthy night out at the Express Avenue last week. The arrested man had hidden himself in one of the toilets on the night of October 26 and burgled three shops, two multi-retail chains, and another mobile store chain under the cover of darkness.

The Anna Salai Police, who were pursuing complaints from two of the three shops, picked up the suspect identified as Arun Sasi (33), of Kottayam. Three luxury watches worth '2 lakh, 3 mobile phones including an iPhone and costly readymade dresses were recovered from his possession.

Poring over the CCTV footage collected from different cameras inside the mall, the cops found a man with his face masked with a handkerchief walking out of the toilet under the cover of darkness. The man was seen breaking into the shops using a small crowbar like tool. His movements inside the shop too were recorded.

The cops could not positively identify his exit from the mall since the crowd swelled in the mall on October 27 - two days before Deepavali.  The investigation official, who learnt about the mobile phones he had lifted from a shop, collected the IMEI numbers of the phones which were then fed into the City Police mobile trap system.  This brought the suspect on to the police radar soon after he used the stolen iPhone leading to his arrest.

Preliminary investigations revealed that he had struck in a similar fashion in a commercial complex in Chinthadripet and had managed to steal as many as 10 mobile phones.

He told the cops that he waited for nearly an hour inside the toilet after the mall was opened for business on October 27. He used the cover of the shopping crowd to get out of the premises without being flagged. The suspect's role in a couple of waylaying incidents also emerged during the interrogation. He was remanded to judicial custody.