Wanted Thief Breaks Down & Confesses, After Police Threaten To Inform His Doctor, Techie Sons

It was difficult for Pydhonie police to make Ravichandran Mudaliyar, the alleged gang leader of a tak-tak gang and the prime accused in a Rs 2.5 lakh theft case, talk since he claimed not to know any Hindi. He was in police custody for days and yet all he did was respond to cops in Tamil and that too in a confusing manner. That changed when cops finally played their trump card. They told Mudaliyar that if he did not cooperate, they would summon his three sons-a marine engineer, a doctor pursuing a masters in surgery who is attached to a reputed hospital in Navi Mumbai, and a student of hotel management. It was then that Mudaliyar broke down and began to speak to them in fluent Hindi.

The most common modus operandi of the tak-tak gang involves knocking on a car's door on the pretext of informing the driver about "oil leakage" or an accident. The moment the driver rolls down the glass of his window, other gang members engage the driver and flee with valuables, especially high-end mobile phones.

In the current case, a jewellery designer from south Mumbai had lodged a police complaint in March stating that a stranger had knocked on her car's door saying he had noticed oil leak from her vehicle. She told cops that when she got down from her car to check, an unidentified man stole jewellery and cash lying on the backseat and fled. Earlier this month, cops arrested four accused, including Mudliyar, in the case, allegedly while they were in the midst of conspiring to commit another theft.

Mudaliyar is also an accused in a March 2017 heist where Rs 1.6 crore was stolen from a cash van parked outside a SBI ATM in Dharavi, said cops.

"We arrested and interrogated the accused but they were not cooperating and Mudaliyar would respond to us only in Tamil. We initially got four days' police custody of the accused. After that, we sought more time for custodial remand and were granted four more days by the court. We took the call detail records (CDR) of his mobile phone and found a number which belonged to an acquaintance from whom we learnt that he was a resident of Govandi. We went there and found a laundryman and one more person and brought them to the police station. They identified Mudaliyar, but he still refused to cooperate," added the police officer.

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"We managed to get hold of details of his wife and three sons who live in Navi Mumbai; Mudaliyar does not live with them. His oldest son has completed his MBBS. He worked in a reputed city hospital before shifting to one in Navi Mumbai where he is pursuing his MS. His second son is in the merchant navy and the youngest is studying hotel management. Armed with this information, we began to question Mudaliyar again," added the officer.

The fact that the police had cottoned on to his sons came as a shock to Mudaliyar. "This was when he broke down and began to speak of his crime. We recovered gold jewellery worth about Rs 1.5 lakh that he had hidden in one place. Moreover, we also learnt that he was wanted in the Dharavi ATM theft case," added an investigating officer. Mudaliyar is currently lodged in Arthur Road jail.