Kottayam (Kerala), Aug 28 : The Kerala police arrested the leader of an interstate robbery gang from a hideout in Gujarat after two weeks of manhunt, following a burglary at a house in Kottayam district early this month.

The accused, Guru Sajan, a resident of Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh, was arrested on Wednesday from a firm in Morbi in Gujarat, where he had been working under a false identity along with his family after fleeing the Kottayam robbery.

The arrest has unearthed several robberies committed by the gang in various states, including Kerala and Karnataka, said the police.

The accused, along with four other accomplices, had burgled the house of one Annamma Thoamas in Manganam in Kottayam in the wee hours of August 9 and decamped with gold jewellery worth Rs 36 lakh after breaking open the steel almirah.

The robbers broke into the house when the family members were at a hospital in Kottayam, said the police.

According to a senior police official, the gang is suspected of using an intelligence network of migrant workers to identify unoccupied houses. This network allegedly provides information to interstate burglary rings based in states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

During the Kottayam robbery probe, the police had sought assistance from their counterparts in Karnataka, as the gang is believed to be involved in similar cases there as well.

The investigating officer said police examined fingerprints and mobile phones recovered from the locality of the robbery. They scanned nearly 1,000 numbers, which led them to the accused, Guru Sajan.

While probing robberies in neighbouring states, the Kerala police found that the robbery in Kottayam's Manganam resembled one committed in Ramadurga, Karnataka, in 2016.

Investigators later discovered matching fingerprints at the robbery sites in Karnataka and Kerala.

They also found that prints lifted from robbery sites in Kottayam and Thrissur matched, confirming that a single gang was behind the crimes.

The police said the accused had earlier been involved in a gold theft and a government treasury robbery in Karnataka in 2016, in which firearms, including a pistol, were stolen.

Sajan is also suspected to have carried out robberies in Alappuzha in 2023, as well as a break-in at a wellness clinic near Manganam, before targeting the house in the same area recently.

/IANS