Royal Enfield

Gritty Policeman Catches Royal Enfield Thieves Who Sold Bikes For Rs. 40,000

Published by
Surendhar M

The head constable arrested 10 thieves involved in the crime and retrieved 26 Royal Enfield motorcycles in the investigation

The brave act of a policeman has gone viral in the state of Tamil Nadu as he single-handedly busted a gang of thieves who stole Royal Enfield for three long years. Sharavanakumar, a head constable, arrested 10 people involved in the crime while retrieving 26 Royal Enfield motorcycles.

One of his friends within police department lodged a complaint about his stolen Royal Enfield motorcycle and Sharavanakumar took the matter seriously by connecting the dots as a series of crimes over the years and began investigating by the middle of this year. He received similar complaints of stolen RE bikes when he was attached to Abhiramapuram station.

Digging deep into the crime, he found similar cases registered in 24 other stations and all of them were of Royal Enfield motorcycles. He told in an interview “These bikes are not good getaway vehicles, so they were being stolen to be sold,“. As the stolen bikes were taken into places without CCTV surveillance, the police department lost track many times.

The thieves’ clever approach of using the suspected under privileged areas as hideouts were clearly observed by the head constable. He took the case in a different way and proceeded the investigation for two months by surveilling 56 days worth of CCTV footages. When the accused of his friend’s stolen RE was tracked, the strategy repeated.

The thieves took two days to move the motorcycle in a hope that the police would have lost track from a blind spot area but the head constable was right on the trail. The moved the bike through different teams just to cause chaos but soon they were tracked via CCTV at Pattinapakkam and the whole cycle took 15 days.

Meanwhile, another RE took the same route and used blind spot areas to divert the attention towards history sheeters and for police to lose track on them as the days went by. The well executed crime had the Royal Enfield bikes stolen via hot wiring and then fake key was made to avoid any suspicion.

Amidst the people riding the stolen motorcycles were often changed, the police force got hold of their track. “From over two lakh (mobile) numbers we got, we filtered it to 145. We then checked the numbers one by one and brought it further down to 19. From here, when we tried to figure out the identity of those who were using the number, we realised the culprits had used fake ID proofs,” said Sharavanakumar.

The police used different methods that are not publicly revealed to identify the criminals. Sharavanakumar along with sub-inspector Sudhakar found that the thieves stayed in lodges and compared the numbers and three of them were caught this way. The stolen Royal Enfield bikes were sold for Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 40,000 from their original on-road price of up to Rs. 2.50 lakh via Whatsapp group for coordination.

Sharavanakumar and his team’s hard work was lauded by Joint Commissioner of the east division R Sudhakar on social media while Chennai’s Commissioner Mahesh Agarrwal paved a visit to him and handed over a cash reward for his gritty skills and investigation.
Image Source: https://twitter.com/ips_sudhakar/status/1317349228847353856

Published by
Surendhar M