Chennai: In scenes reminiscent of action movies, the who’s who of the gangsters in the city gathered to celebrate the birthday of another gangster — Binu of Choolaimedu.
The celebrations topped off in filmy gangster style with the hoodlums trying to cut cakes with sickles on Tuesday night in the City outskirts near Poonamalee.
The one twist in the tale was that the police gatecrashed their party and rounded up about 75 of them near Vandalur-Minjur road on Tuesday night.
Police teams from Anti Gangster Squad and from Ambattur district rounded up the history sheeters under gunpoint, thus spoiling their celebrations. Police sources said that some of them had assembled at the shop of a mechanic to celebrate the birthday of notorious rowdy Binu. Binu had several cases pending against him including murder cases, police said. He had been to establish himself as a kingpin among gangsters.
As the celebrations began and police closed in on them, some of them spotted the cops and spread a code word following which many attempted to escape.
“We managed to nab most of them,” said a police officer. Binu too managed to flee the scene and police have launched a hunt for him. Police teams from Kundrathur, Porur, SRMC, Poonamalee, Mangadu intensified vehicle checks and helped in nabbing most of them from hideouts along the highway.
Police also seized 15 motorbikes, 7 cars and 88 mobile phones and many sharp weapons. Police are questioning the arrested goons and searching for the rest.
It is the mob’s attempt to showboat which helped police to nab them all from a single location. The incident has also rocked the crime underbelly of the state. Police officers in the know said that elaborate plans were made at least a week ago after multiple intelligence were collected about the ‘gathering’.
According to a senior police officer, who was part of the operation, “Binu wanted to show off as some kind of a kingpin. He wanted to be known as the Dawood Ibrahim of Tamil Nadu and wanted his birthday celebrations to be like in the movies.”
The mistake the gangster did was, according to the officer, letting people who are not part of his immediate network know about the plans and invites sent out weeks ago. “Some of them who received his invites are not exactly his friends,” the officer added.
Explaining further, the officer said, every gang has a core group and a support group. While the core group can be anywhere between three persons and 30 of them depending on their scale of operations and their network, the support group is usually indefinite, mostly made up of street criminals.
“In a set up like this, sending invitations a week ago is digging your own grave as far as the mob world is concerned as usually, they prefer gathering in a short notice,” the officer added.
It was easier for information to trickle out as some of them got boastful while drunk and cops had a tip off from one of them-Mohan from Pallikaranai who was picked up by the anti-gangster squad.
While, the police knew days ago about the impending care, the top brass took utmost care to not the same mistake the ‘mob’ did. “The entire operation was kept top secret limiting only to a handful until the final phase and the teams were also drafted from outside the jurisdiction,” a senior officer said.
