A five-year-old girl allegedly stole Rs 1 lakh from a 58-year-old woman on Monday, leading to a chase with police that eventually led to the arrest of the girl’s mother and grandmother. The girl, police said, concealed the money in a newspaper and kept it inside a polythene bag. “The girl had been trained by her family members to steal the money. The family belongs to the Bawariya gang notorious for thefts in this part of the city. The girl led us on a tiring chase,” said a police officer. Police said the girl’s mother and grandmother have been arrested. “We have arrested both women under sections IPC sections 379, 411 and 34. The girl will be handed over to her relatives, and since she is less than five years old, we will not be taking any legal action against her,” said Additional DCP (Shahdara) Ved Prakash Surya. Police said the women had been previously arrested for committing thefts in southeast Delhi’s Badarpur. The theft took place at Rohtas Nagar, when Sunita, who was travelling, realised that her purse had become lighter. She told police that two women had stolen around Rs 1 lakh from her purse. “The two women were caught from the area. We questioned them, and the girl’s mother told us that their daughter had taken the money,” the officer said. Police teams tracked down the girl after a door-to-door search in Rohtas Nagar. The girl, who police said was “unperturbed”, told them that she was unable to carry the weight of the currency notes and dumped them at a vegetable vendor’s stall. “The vendor handed over the money to us and said the girl had given him the money saying that she will take it from him later,” the officer said. Police then went on a door-to-door search with his photograph and managed to find him. "We then had to check the CCTV footage because when we reached the spot where the girl took us, the vendor was not there. We had to sit for more than one hour looking through the CCTV footage before we identified the vendor, Naveen," the officer said.
