COLOMBO SCHOOL TEACHER'S CREDIT CARD SCANDAL

Teacher of popular girls' school robs credit card of teacher-friend goes shopping gets nabbed

     A lady teacher of a leading girls' school in Kollupitiya was taken into custody last Friday in connection with the theft of a credit card.

     She had committed this crime in the school rest-room. She has seen the handbag of a teacher who was teaching with her in the same grade in the school and who is supposed to be her best friend. On this occasion she had surreptiously poked her hand inside the handbag and removed the credit card inside. Later she had gone home, and on the advice given by her husband, "Pay the bill with the credit card and put your signature as it appears there .... that's all". She had subsequently gone to a supermarket and a readymade garment outlet in the company of her husband and purchased a number of items.

    In the meantime, the teacher who lost her card searched for it everywhere, but to no avail and depressed over the incident finally complained to the police.

   The Kollupitiya police then conducted a data inquiry with the credit card company and subsequently collected information about places where purchases had been made on that number and also was able to find out the time when such purchases were made from branches of supermarkets and readymade garment outlets. It was after that on police orders that the data of cctv cameras of relevant outlets were checked. The police were able to unravel how an identical couple were making purchases on the same number of the said credit card.

   The couple had bought a gold necklace, a large number of items of clothes and a good number of drinks and food from this credit card.

    A video clip was shown to the teacher who lost the credit card in order to find out whether she knew the suspect when she was amazed to find that it was her best friend which she said that she could not believe that it could have been done by her.

    Later when the video was shown to her it is reported that she began crying at the police station thinking of her friend.

    The suspected teacher, a resident of Piliyandala area who arrived in school the following day was taken into custody because of the credit card theft. She and her husband were both arrested.

   The two of them are to be produced before courts.