BANGALORE: The J.P. Nagar police have arrested four persons and solved 34 cases of robbery and chain snatching, in addition to a murder that remained a challenge to the Bangalore Rural district and the Tamil Nadu police.

The police had recovered gold chains estimated at Rs. 1.50 lakh from the arrested. They were on the lookout for the gang leader Mallesh of Hosur in Tamil Nadu, who had once escaped from the Salem Central Prison.

The names of the arrested were given as Ramesh Rao (32) of A. Narayanapura in K.R. Puram, Muthuraj (27) of Sarabandepalya in Banashankari, Kaleem Pasha (20) of New Gurappanapalya on Bannerghatta Road and Venkatesh alias Chappe (25) of Ambedkar Colony on Hosur Road.

The police said the accused went around in autorickshaws and motorcycles, waylaid lonely people, threatened them with choppers and robbed them of their gold chains. In some cases, they had attacked their victims, mainly women.

They had committed crimes in J.P. Nagar, MICO Layout, Koramangala, Madivala, Banashankari, Jayanagar, Tilaknagar, Banaswadi, HAL and Bannerghatta police station limits, the police said.

Commissioner of Police Neelam Achuta Rao returned some of the recovered gold chains to their owners. After receiving their jewellery, two of the victims, Nalina, a software engineer with Wipro, and Nagarathna, a housewife, explained how the accused had attacked and robbed them of the chains.

The police said that during interrogation, the accused confessed to a murder they had committed in Kodihalli police station limits in Kanakapura taluk of Bangalore Rural district in August last.

Along with their leader Mallesh, they had taken Venkatesh of Sarjapur to a secluded area near Kodihalli and allegedly murdered him. Mallesh had hatched the plan to kill Venkatesh as he had separated him from his lover, the police said.

In August, severed limbs and the head of a man were found at two places, Kadushivanahalli and Yerdappanahalli villages in Kodihalli police station limits. While the Kodihalli police were inspecting the areas where the limbs and the head were lying, two men, who were riding a motorcycle, told the police that a torso had been found in Thali police station limits in Tamil Nadu. Thali is around 15 km from Kodihalli.

After the Bangalore Rural district police alerted their Thali counterparts, a police team from Tamil Nadu came to Kodihalli and took the severed limbs and the head to match them with the torso.

The arrest and recoveries were made by a team led by the J.P. Nagar Inspector T. Konappa Reddy and comprising sub inspector Puttarame Gowda, assistant sub-inspector S. Lakshmanaiah and constables Mare Gowda, Munibasavaiah, Ravindra, Shivakumar, Mahadevaiah, Siddaiah, Ramachandra and Syed Munir.

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