DMK councillor among three held for fraud

MADURAI: Three persons, including a DMK Councillor in Madurai Corporation, were arrested, and 229 sovereigns of gold jewellery, Rs 1.6 lakh in cash, a car and some mobile phones recovered from them, on Thursday.South Zone IG of Police M N Manjunatha, also the Commissioner (in-charge) of  Madurai City Police, told reporters that the department received a complaint from one Dhanuja regarding a cheating case involving over 320 sovereigns of gold jewellery. She, along with her mother Umadevi, had been to one Dhamodharan, who claimed himself to be an astrologer.Dhamodharan’s wife Amudha is the present DMK councillor of the 54th Ward of Madurai Corporation. Dhamodharan had told his victims that their stars had not been faring well and some poojas had to be performed to remedy this. He suggested that they bring all their jewellery for the pooja. He said he would return the jewellery after three days, but failed to do so. This created suspicion among the victims. Their efforts to retrieve the jewellery went in vain and they approa­ched the police.Though the incident happened a month ago, the complaint was received only a fortnight ago. A team led by Senthil Kumar, DCP (law & order) cracked the case and recovered a total of 229 sovereigns of gold jewellery worth Rs 60 lakh from the accused and another 55 sovereigns from a jewellery shop in Chennai.