The DN Nagar police of Andheri area has arrested a gang of five that was allegedly involved in pick pocket and bag lifting cases in BEST buses.
The DN Nagar police of Andheri area has arrested a gang of five that was allegedly involved in pick pocket and bag lifting cases in BEST buses. Besides the five arrested accused, officials suspect there could be more people in the gang.
“With the arrest of these five, we believe that more cases of bag lifting and pick pocketing will come to the light,” said an official. The accused used to target buses operating on routes like Andheri–Versova, Swami Samarth Nagar–Andheri and Juhu–Vileparle. According to officials, the accused used to pick crowded buses to commit the crime.
The arrested accused have been identified as Vakil Ahmed Khan, Ravi Komal Singh, Shahrukh Ayub Shaikh, Raju Jagdish Baigal and Hajrat Shaukat Shaikh. All the accused, residents of Mumbra and Kalyan area, were produced in court on Friday and remanded in police custody. According to police officials, they had noticed a rise in the number of pick pocket incidents in buses in Andheri area in the past few weeks. After receiving many complaints over the same, the police formed a special team to investigate the issue. The crime branch team was also kept in the loop.
During investigation, the police received a tip that the accused were planning to gather at Rajkumar junction of Andheri, from there they would split up and board different buses to pick the pockets of the passengers. A police team was duly deployed at the junction in plain cloths. Officials in the area soon noticed Khan, Singh, Aub Shaikh, Baigal and Hajrat Shaikh roaming in the area in a suspicious manner, following which they detained them. During interrogation, the accused revealed that they are residents of Mumbra and Kalyan and visit Andheri early morning to pick pockets. “The accused used to take an advantage of crowd and pockets, bags and female purse and hand bags were there target,” said an official.
According to the police, in the last eight days the accused had robbed around '45,000 from passengers. “Their modus operandi includes surrounding the victim and then lift or pick his or her purse,” an official said. The accused have confessed to two crimes and the police suspects they have been involved in more crimes. The police also plans to alert the locals about the gang, as they believe people may not have approached the police as the amount stolen was relatively small. They hope they will be able to get more complaints following an appeal to the public.
