A chat over phone does robbers in

CHENNAI: A brief conversation over the cell phone helped the police nab two members of an armed gang that looted a beauty parlour in Anna Nagar recently. On July 10, three men walked into a parlour located on Second Main Road, Anna Nagar around 6.30 pm for a hair cut and facial.Later, when one of the employees presented a Rs 1,000 bill, the trio entered into a heated argument with the cashier. Suddenly, they brandished knives, locked up two employees in a room and snatched a nine-sovereign gold chain from another at knife-point.  One of them also took away Rs 50,000 from the cash box. Though the parlour had  a Closed Circuit Television camera (CCTVs) network, it soon became part of the loot after an employee bragged to a gang member that the police would arrest them as their images would have been recorded by the cameras. The trio then fled the spot.  Subsequently, the saloon owner Sheela (31) of Pudupet filed a complaint with the Anna Nagar police. Special police teams, led by DCP Prem Anand Sinha then started investigating the incident. The clue lay in two cryptic words spoken into a cell phone by one of the gang members at the scene of crime. To a probable question from the caller “Is it over (Mudindatha),” he replied, “Not yet (Innum Illai)” and switched off the phone.Scouting all the towers of various mobile companies in the area, the teams carefully scrutinised records of the call traffic at the time of the crime. “Every cell phone call has to pass through a local tower. So, we studied the cell phone records of calls coinciding approximately with the time of occurrence of the robbery,” a senior police official told Express.After painstakingly going through hundreds of calls, the police finally zeroed in on a suspect. Grilled about his presence in the vicinity on July 10, he spilled the beans. Based on the man’s confession, a second member of the gang was also picked up. A car used for the crime was also seized.The police identified the arrested duo as A Imran (19) of Kilpauk and I Iqbal (25) of Perambur. Meanwhile, the police have launched a search for the other gang members, Husain and Kader of Choolaimedu.