CHENNAI: Video calls which a phone thief attended at different areas landed him behind the bars on Thursday night. Four men nabbed him with the help of screenshots which they took while the man answered the calls.Police said K Vellaiyappan, an earthmover operator from Krishnagiri district, worked at the Jayalalithaa memorial for a couple of months. Along with drivers Mohan, Karthik and Lingeshwaran , he stayed at a makeshift tent there. At 3am on Thursday, the four found six phones belonging to them and two others missing from the tent. Around 4pm, they borrowed a phone from a friend and made a video call to Lingeshwaran’s mobile which he had not locked. When the suspect attended the video call, they took a screenshot. In the image, the suspect was seen wearing a red T-shirt, chain, ear stud and had a black bag.The men noticed that he was standing at the Egmore railway station. They went there with an acquaintance, Balamurugan, and around 5pm made another call. This time too the thief answered. Police said he did not know how to disconnect a video call. He was found travelling on a train. Later at 7pm, Vellaiyappan and his friends again made a call. Although he answered, he turned the phone away from his face and showed a textile showroom on Ranganathan Street. The four men rushed there and found the man talking with a shop owner, bargaining to sell the mobile phone.“Though we were four, we were scared to nab him. This was the first time we are coming across a thief,” said Balamurugan. “We sent the photograph of the man to all our friends roaming the street. His T-shirt, bag and stud helped us to identify him,” he said. A shopkeeper helped the men nab the thief. They dragged him to an autorickshaw and reached Marina where they handed him over to Anna Square police station.Police identified the thief as M Nalliveeran, 28, of Pelamedu, Coimbatore. They seized six phones and arrested him.

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