In its most stomach-churning investigation ever, the Kerala police was forced to pump laxatives into a hardened thief for five days in a row before he “surrendered” a costly gold chain he swallowed.
The thief, Shafeeq, 25, a native of Palluruthy, had wrenched off a gold chain from a three-year-old girl in a bus in Ambalapuzha on Sunday. Cops caught him the same evening but could not find the nine gm gold chain in his possession.
The suspicious cops then took him to the Vandanam Medical College Hospital where doctors took an X-ray of his tummy and found that the gold chain was safely ensconced inside. The cops, who were provoked by the impertinent thief’s antic, got him admitted in the hospital and kept him under guard.
On the insistence of the cops, a team of doctors led by the head of the surgery wing, Dr Sajikumar, started an intense “laxative” operation and continued it for four days, taking periodic X-ray photographs.
to monitor their success.
Though Shafeeq’s fatigue increased, the obstinate gold chain stayed where it was. On Wednesday night, the surgeons felt that the ornament was about to get entangled in the intestine and got ready to do a colonoscopy.
However, on Thursday afternoon, the combined pressure of purgatives, doctors and police personnel did the trick and a tired Shafeeq yielded the stolen article through the excretory route.
The relieved and “disgusted” cops presented the thief and the “evidence” before the Ambalapuzha magistrate court on Friday.
Though the family had mentioned that a gold locket was also missing, they are not planning to press the complaint for obvious reasons.