The accused woman had borrowed ₹2 lakh from her neighbour, and decided to filch the gold jewellery to return repay the loan.
Representational image of an accused behind bars.
The Bengaluru City Police have arrested a 37-year-old nurse from a private multispecialty hospital for alleged theft. She disguised herself as a doctor in a nearby hospital in order to rob the gold jewellery of two women patients on Thursday, 19 January, police said.
The accused, Lakshmi N, was a resident of Koramangala and lived alone after she separated from her husband, the cops added.
The Ashok Nagar police have registered a case of theft and also recovered two gold chains and a finger ring from a person she had handed the jewels over to.
According to the police, Lakshmi, donning a doctor’s white coat, wearing a mask and carrying a vanity bag, was seen walking inside St Philomena’s Hospital. The security guards had not checked Lakshmi, mistaking her for a doctor working at the hospital.
She walked along the St Philomena’s Hospital corridors to identify the patients she could steal jewellery from — targeting middle-aged and elderly aged women, a senior police officer from Ashok Nagar told South First.
Explaining the alleged modus operandi, police said she zeroed in on two women patients at the St Philomena’s Hospital, and went and told their respective attendants to wait outside as she had to examine them “gynaecologically”. The attendants waiting outside the rooms were clueless that the patients were getting robbed.
One of the victims’ sons suspected later that it was the woman doctor who had made away with his mother’s finger ring and gold chain. He went on to file a complaint with the Ashok Nagar police station.
The Ashok Nagar police, who registered an FIR, analysed the CCTV footage of the hospital and identified her as a nurse at a multispecialty hospital in Koramangala.
Soon after the cops cornered her with evidence, Lakshmi told the police that she had decided to rob the gold ornaments as she was being blackmailed by a person who had some objectionable videos of her.
According to the police, after they further probed into the matter, they learnt that Lakshmi had cooked up that story in order to mislead them.
Upon questioning her further, she confessed that she had taken a loan of ₹2 lakh recently from her neighbour, a vegetable vendor, the cops said. When her neighbour started asking he to return the money, she decided to rob elderly patients at a nearby hospital as she knew the area well.
According to the police, she told them that she had robbed the gold jewellery and handed them over to her neighbour telling him that they were hers and that he could pledge them to get his ₹2 lakh.
The cops are now examining the neighbour. “We are questioning the vegetable vendor to figure out whether he has any involvement in the crime,” said a senior police officer.
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