Who said crime was easy?

Planning and investment are the new mantras among criminals the heist at Muthoot Finance Co is the most recent example of crime as a business proposition

The recent robbery at Muthoot Finance Company in which 40 kg of gold was stolen shows how meticulous criminals have become.

The plan

The planning started much before the crime actually took place. Kingpin Nirmal Rajkumar, a building contractor and network engineer, had incurred heavy losses and was looking for ways to get out of the mess.

Rajkumar had earlier borrowed money by pleading gold valuables and had seen the strong room by chance. He later confessed that he had visited the company many times while applying for a loan and had noticed the lax security.

Rajkumar took his friend Jayakumar into confidence who not only agreed to help but also promised to rope in his friends from Tiruvannamalai.

Rajkumar convinced everyone that the operation needed meticulous planning and the others pooled in around Rs 7 lakh as 'investment'.

As per the plan, Rajkumar rented out a house in Mahadevapura where Jayakumar was living. He then approached the owner of a loss-making computer centre near Muthoot Finance Company and bought it for Rs 2 lakh. He also paid Rs 1.5 lakh to the building owner and an additional Rs 40,000 to the computer centre owner as a goodwill gesture.

Rajkumar bought mobile sets for the gang members along with new SIM cards and forbade them from contacting their family or friends till the operation was successful.

Rajkumar also bought a second-hand bike and a Maruti van for Rs 68,000 from a car dealer without revealing his identity, assistant commissioner of police B B Ashok Kumar said.

Rajkumar and the others would visit the centre to watch the movements of the staff. They would share notes at the end of the day.

The execution

On June 2, two of the gang followed John's motorcycle and knocked him down. The others, following in a van, rushed to him on the pretext of getting him medical treatment. They abducted John, drugged him, took him to the outskirts of the city and robbed him of his valuables, including the strong room key. They then went back to the office at night and looted 40 kg of gold. Soon after the heist, the gang of nine shared the booty and headed off in different directions u2014 to Manali, Mumbai and Delhi.

They wanted the issue to die down before they sold their share so that they would not get caught. They were reading newspapers and watching television to stay abreast of developments. After a respectable time limit, they planned to dispose of their booty in various parts of North India.

Cracking the case

When the east division police got a lead from a mobile shop owner, they managed to catch one of the accused, who spilled the beans about his associates' whereabouts. Police tracked down the rest and confiscated their valuables. They suspect that Jayakumar was involved in a similar robbery in Kerala.u00a0
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Police recovered 34.6 kg of gold valuables worth Rs 6 crore.