The Chelambra bank robbery in the Malappuram district of Kerala, India is considered to be one of the biggest and most sensational bank robberies in the crime history of Kerala.

In the early hours of 30 December 2007, the robbers made a hole in the floor of the Kerala Gramin Bank and got away with 76 kilograms of gold and 24,00,000 rupees, a total value of 80 million Indian Rupees...

The Kerala Police quickly formed a number of special teams. A special team led by Malappuram Superintendent of Police P. Vijayan and Deputy Superintendent K K Ibrahim conducted the investigation under the supervision of K.S.Jangpangi the Additional Director General of Kerala Police.

The team consisted of Circle Inspectors of Police Vikraman and M.P Mohanachandran, SI Anvar Hussain and other officers from the subordinate ranks .


It was a challenging task for Kerala Police to begin investigation as there was no evidence and no leads available for them to proceed with. Like many other bank robberies, it was done at the wee hours of a Sunday, since it is a holiday and it had come to light only on the next day.

However, police made a computer graphic sketch image of the main culprit as illustrated by eyewitnesses and neighbors. The criminals tried to create an impression of Naxalite involvement in the robbery by quoting a sentence Jai Mao (praising naxalism) at the scene of the crime to deviate enquiry. There were many attempts by the culprits to divert the whole attention of the investigation team to Hyderabad. According to police officials, the criminals had purposely left one kilogram of looted gold in a hotel room in Hyderabad and made telephone calls from many different cities of India to mislead the investigation.

The police team also monitored all telephone calls in the closest mobile signal towers at the location of the crime during the midnight hours of the incident. It was a big task monitoring more than two million calls. The help of various mobile service providers and IT professionals was also enlisted for the probe.

And finally, it was the identification of a secret phone number used by the main suspects to communicate between themselves, that became the turning point in the investigation....

свернуть