A hot chase for nearly two km on a motorcycle by police constable M. Rajkumar (26) on the Bypass Road here on Friday was worth the risk.
The catch-me-if-you-can challenge posed by one of the two chain-snatchers fleeing on a motorcycle gave the duty-conscious constable an adrenaline rush.
Rajkumar, attached to the VI Battalion of Tamil Nadu Special Police here, was returning to his quarters on New Natham Road from Kalavasal. While slowing down his vehicle near a speed breaker on Vaigai North Bank Road, he saw the pillion rider of a motorcycle yanking the chain of a woman-rider.
As the woman raised an alarm, the policeman made a U-turn and started chasing the culprits. “Though I was in civvies, the pillion rider should have identified me as a policeman on seeing the ‘Police’ sticker on my headlight visor. He challenged me, saying: Catch me if you can,” Rajkumar said.
With his entire focus on their motorcycle which did not have a registration number plate on the rear, Rajkumar took the risk of jumping a traffic signal on the busy Bypass Road so as not to lose sight of them. After taking the service road for a while, the two made a U-turn to take the carriage way on the wrong side. But the constable did not give up.
“In their urgency to escape, they fell down from the motorcycle. The rider’s leg got caught under the vehicle and I pounced on them. But the pillion rider started attacking me. After a scuffle for a few seconds, I raised an alarm and passers-by helped me overpower the two,” Rajkumar said.
This city-bred constable said that in his five years of police service, he had only heard of chain-snatching cases but never saw somebody in the act. “As a policeman, I can’t leave them flee just like that. I have only done my duty,” he said with all humility.
Commissioner of Police Sanjay Mathur commended his brave act and gave him a cash reward.
