It was around two in the morning, August 8. Mr. and Mrs. Kusum Fernando had just called it a night and had retired to bed. Their 18-year-old son, who was still working at his computer, soon followed suit, to his own bedroom.
By about 7 a.m., the next day everyone was up. And what they woke up to was nothing short of a rude shock.The Fernandos’ wardrobe had been ransacked, clothes ctrewn everywhere. To their horror, the couple realised that one of the drawers was missing. They soon discovered that the drawer had found its way to the living room. Two rings, one of them a diamond ring worth Rs. 180,000 and two earrings, all of which the couple knew were safely inside that very drawer the previous night, were no longer there.
Mr. Fernando next checked on his two German Shepherds to make sure they had not been poisoned. They hadn’t, but he noticed that they looked stunned. They also realised that their son’s Rs. 116,000 worth Apple iPhone too had been robbed, along with Rs. 300 from his wallet and Rs. 1800 from Mr. Fernando’s own wallet.
 |
| Mr. Fernando shows the wardrobe that was ransacked Pix by Athula Devapriya |
It was a robbery that put paid to goods worth a total of Rs. 328,000.
But that was not to be the only robbery that night. Three other houses in the vicinity, a highly residential and quiet suburban area between Mount Lavinia and Ratmalana, were also broken into that same night. The Fernandos’ next door house, which was vacant at the time, was one of those houses. However, not much was stolen from that house as its occupants had stored their valuables in a vault.
The neigbhourhood is a network of beautiful houses, with lanes crisscrossing, like something out of a picture postcard. According to Mr. Fernando, the robbers had climbed his wall, and from there, had made their way to his neigbhour’s house, just a foot away from his own two-storey house.
“We were up watching TV before we went to bed. My son hadn’t heard anything, either. My wife and I were asleep when it happened. They had walked past us and removed the jewellery. They had taken the entire drawer to the sitting room,” Mr. Fernando said.
The Fernandos along with one of their neighbours went to the Mount Lavinia Police to lodge a complaint. But when they had got there, according to Mr. Fernando, they were once again in for a rude shock.
“When we went to complain to the police, we were kept waiting at the station for 40 minutes and nothing happened. A neighbhour then contacted a DIG who in turn called the Mount Lavinia OIC, and only then did they visit the house to take finger prints. Nothing happened after that. I didn’t go to the police after that because there was no point,” he complained.
Kumudu Kulatunga, one of Mr. Fernando’s neighbours, had been keeping an eye on the goings-on of her neighbourhood for some time now. According to her, robberies were nothing new to their peaceful little neighbourhood, but it was never this bad. “We are certain that a gang is behind these robberies. We used to have the odd robber or two who would snatch chains etc but it was never on a big scale. But now, things have got worse. About two months ago, a house owner was held at gunpoint, while his house was robbed – on a weekday around 8.30 p.m. Definitely there’s an organised gang involved,” she said. Despite the alarming increase in robberies, most people in the area are reluctant to complain to the authorities, she said.
“People have complained, but the disinterest you encounter when you go to make a complaint, and the time the police take to respond to even an emergency call, have made people fed up of reporting these things,” one of the neighbours said.
However, the police did manage to apprehend one man. A man who police and some of the neighbours strongly suspect was behind the recent series of robberies. His name, Chooti Putha. With over 270 cases of robbery allegedly attributed to him, over 120 of them are from the Mount Lavinia/Ratmalana area, Chooti Putha, according to police, had been on the run for three months, since he escaped from the Mirihana Police remand custody, till he was finally apprehended at a housing complex in Raddolugama, Seeduwa last month. He is now under detention orders at the Mount Lavinia police station.
Sub Inspector Tissa Sugathapala, Mount Lavinia’s Crimes OIC, who led the team that arrested Chooti Putha following a three-week long investigation, told the Sunday Times that the 34-year-old “Island Reconvicted Criminal (IRC)” was a drug addict who required a daily dose of heroine worth Rs. 10,000. He needed substantial income to support this habit, said SI Sugathapala, and so took to frequenting residential areas occupied by businessmen.
Police claimed there had been a drastic drop of robberies since Chooti Putha’s arrest, a claim disputed by some of the burgled victims who insisted that a robbery took place the very next day following his arrest. However, according to police, Chooti Putha did not operate alone, and there were several other unrelated gangs operating in the same area. Colombo Crimes DIG Anura Senanayake said that subsequently 25 of these gang members were taken into custody.
“Several of the bigger groups have fled the area. We have deployed a special team to apprehend the ones who have fled. There is a high rate of robbery in areas like Nugegoda and Mount Lavinia, because the robbers have become experts at breaking in to houses. We have started special operations in both these areas now,” he said.
Mount Lavinia HQI IP Mahesh Perera had a word of caution for residents . “The people’s negligence is also a reason for this problem. When we visited these houses, we noticed that some of these families leave their houses for days without so much as switching a light bulb on. Others don’t check if their doors are shut properly before going to bed. They don’t even check underneath their beds before they sleep. About 90% of the time, it is the people’s negligence that lead to these robberies. We have solved many cases, and we try to educate people about what measures should be taken, and how to face such situations,” he said. |
E-mail
