CHENNAI: Five men suspected to be behind two bank robberies in Chennai in the last one month were killed in a gunbattle with the city police at

in the early hours of Thursday.

Police commissioner J K Tripathy said the gunbattle lasted for 15 minutes, from 1am to 1.15am, leaving two police inspectors injured and all the five suspects dead. The suspects were identified as Chandrika Rey from West Bengal, and Vinod Kumar, Vinay Prasad, Abhay Kumar and Harish Kumar from Bihar. Two of them are former students of an engineering college in the city suburbs. Police recovered five guns and bundles of cash from the suspects.

Two days after the gang struck a branch of Indian Overseas Bank in Keelkattalai on Monday, city police commissioner J K Tripathy had held a press conference on Wednesday to release a video of a suspect allegedly doing a recce at a nationalised bank. “With people’s cooperation, we will nab them soon,” he had said.

Chennai went to sleep with that reassurance, and woke up to the tale of a bloody encounter. Tripathy said on Thursday that his team got a tip-off around midnight about the suspects staying on the ground floor of a three-storey house on

in Velachery. “We immediately sent a team of 14 led by deputy commissioner of police (Adyar) M Sudhakar and two assistant commissioners Kannan (Madipakkam) and Manickavel (Guindy)," the commissioner said.

The team surrounded the house and three police inspectors took position by the windows, while three other inspectors targeted the main door of the house. The commissioner said the suspects opened fire at the police team at 1am, injuring inspectors P Ravi (Teynampet) and Christian Jayasil (Thoraipakkam). The police team broke open the window and the door and opened fire at the suspects. The gun battle left the suspects badly injured. They were rushed to the Government General Hospital, where the doctors declared them dead on arrival. The injured inspectors were admitted to the Government Royapettah Hospital.

Police sources said they got information from a person, who didn't want to reveal his identity, about the robbers. "After seeing the suspect’s photograph released by the police commissioner on Wednesday, the informer claimed that the suspect was staying at his relative's house on A L Mudali Street, Nethaji Road near the Tamil Nadu Housing Board quarters in Velachery,” a source said.

Police sources said the robbers stayed in the house since last December after paying an advance of Rs 20,000. Though the incident happened in a residential area, no one in the neighbourhood appeared to know what had happened. Reporters who reached the spot soon after the incident were kept at bay till 5.45am.

Finally, when they were let in, the suspects’ ‘den’ turned out to be a 300 sqft portion of a house, with a bedroom, a hall, a bathroom and a kitchen. Among the blood-soaked belongings of the suspects was a red, black and white checked shirt one of the suspects was seen wearing in the video clip released by the police commissioner hardly 10 hours before the gun battle. The suspect, the police identified, was Vinod Kumar, doing a recce at a nationalised bank.

Three more portions of the house were occupied by families. Police are questioning the house owners, brothers Deivendran and Murugan. As the court has directed a magistrate probe should be conducted in the police encounters, police have informed the chief metropolitan magistrate about the incident.

About a month before the gang struck the IOB branch at Keelkattalai, a branch of Bank of Baroda was robbed on January 23 last. The robbers took away Rs 19 lakh from BoB and Rs 14 lakh from IOB in a swift operation by holding the bank staffs and customers at gunpoint.