Con ‘top cop’ in Tamil Nadu police net

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Chennai Police arrested Friday Vellore native Vijay Bhanu alias Sheeba Mathew, 36, for allegedly posing as a senior IPS official and cheating many.

The accused with a fake photo identity card in DGP uniform is daughter of Sundaram of St. Thomas Mount, Chennai.

The arrest was made following a complaint by a man in March that the “IPS officer” cheated his sister Videchana, a woman warden at Vellore Jail, of Rs 3 lakh after making her invest in a trust with a promise to double the money in a year.

Police also arrested Vijay Bhanu’s uncle Devaraj of Vellore, a master in forging documents, and photographer Mathivanan of Pulianthope in Chennai for allegedly superimposing her photos on that of senior policemen to create the illusion that she was an IPS officer.

Police believe the three could have cheated many to the tune of a few crore rupees in the past three years. “They had been doing it at least for the past three years,” an investigating officer said.

Police also found that Vijay Bhanu cheated many people posing as a journalist. She reportedly began her con “career” after coming out of Vellore Jail where she was lodged in connection with a theft.

She befriended the warden and a few high-profile criminals lodged in the prison saying she was an IPS officer probing irregularities in the jail and cheated them.

‘Cop’ dupes many with gift of gab

Vijay Bhanu’s fake identity card says she joined the IPS on June 28, 2000. Her name was given as Sheeba Mathew, born in 1978.

The identity card also says she was attached to the CISF.

Her fake journalist identity card says she was a sub-editor with a Tamil magazine, Urimai Murasu. For her, both these fake cards were just tools to support her claims which she did well with her communication skills.

In 2010, when she was imprisoned for a crime, she impressed the woman jail warden at Vellore prison that she was a senior IPS officer on special assignment sent to the jail as an accused to find out irregularities in the jail.

The warden was asked not to share that ‘secret information’ with anybody.

She also impressed a few other inmates with her communication skills and told them that she would help them come out of jail soon. When she was released, she collected the addresses of her ‘friends’ in jail and went to their home.

She collected money from their families with a promise to get the accused released from jail. She collected money from relatives of the jail warden to invest in her trust.

But she never bothered to fulfil the promises and gobbled all the money. She never appeared anywhere in uniform, but just kept an ID card and always travelled by car.

“As an IPS officer, she was even called to deliver addresses at two schools in Perambur a few months ago. We believe she could have cheated more than 20 persons using her fake IPS tag,” a member of the investigation team said.

Photographer Mathivanan, who was arrested, was also in possession of a fake identity card of a reporter. Vijay Bhanu’s uncle, arrested along with her, was earlier arrested in connection with forgery cases.