Malaysian hotelier turns train thief in Chennai, nabbed

CHENNAI: He was a director of a hotel in Malaysia who turned a serial train thief in Chennai, allegedly to buy out one of his partners. K Sahul Hameed of Thrissur in Kerala, a 39-year-old twice-married polyglot who was set to wed for the third time, is now in jail. The railway police, who arrested him on Friday, said they had recovered 110 sovereigns of gold jewellery, worth around ₹28 lakh, that he had stolen from at least 29 passengers and pledged with pawnbrokers in Thrissur and Mumbai.
A special team formed by DGP (railways) C Sylendra Babu and DIG (railways) V Balakrishnan on May 7 found a ‘well dressed’ man moving aimlessly at Chennai Central and detained him.He gave his name as Sahul Hameed and said he had been at the game since 2016. After a detailed inquiry, he was arrested.
Thief had details of all burglaries stored in a laptop
A police officer said Sahul Hameed ran the Niche Valley Hotel at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with two partners, his wife Sahana and their two children. He would fly to Chennai and board trains bound for Kerala from the city at night, purchasing both AC and sleeper class tickets.
He told police that he targeted wealthy passengers, particularly women travelling alone to Kerala. “He would arrive at the railway station at least an hour before the departure of a train and ‘select’ his victims,” said Balakrishnan. He would wait until late at night to strike.
“The second class AC compartments with curtains made it easy for him to operate. He would lift the bag, empty the valuables and place the bag at the same spot to ensure the owner didn’t suspect anything,” Balakrishnan said, adding that the thief had the details of all his burglaries stored in a laptop.
A police team led by inspector Thomas Jesudasan took him to the places where he pledged the stolen gold and recovered it.
The DIG said Sahul Hameed, who had visited at least 11 countries and was fluent in six languages, conducted fashion shows every month at his hotel. He told police that he would bring models from Algeria, France, The Netherlands and Uzbekistan and offer them as escorts to business tycoons.
After divorcing his first wife, who now lives in Dubai, he married his current wife Sahana with whom he has two children.
He was planning to get married to a woman named Jasmine, a native of Algeria, Balakrishnan said.
The DIG said their inquiries revealed that he had been running a fake job consultancy firm, promising people lucrative jobs in foreign countries and collecting huge sums of money.
The Nagpur police had arrested him in 2012 in a case of rape and the Palakkad police booked him in a similar case.