VADODARA, JULY 11: Gone are the days when a typical thief used to be a shady-looking character in ragged clothes who used to climb up drain-pipes to commit his crimes. The successful thief today is a fellow who totes a mobile-phone, drives a car, and is probably better educated than the average policeman - a fact of life investigating agencies in Vadodara are just coming to terms with.``When policemen suspected a well-dressed man in a Fiat car in Ankleshwar recently, the police detectives initially could not muster courage to stop and interrogate him because it is very difficult to suspect such a man of being a petty criminal,'' said a DCB official here.Though the man initially tried to play smart and shouted at the policemen for their temerity in stopping him and searching his car, he could not hide his guilt. The car he was driving was stolen from Vadodara. Suresh, from Orissa, is now cooling his heels in the Baroda Central Jail.His arrest has puzzled the investigating agencies because most of the members of his gang, about 10 in number, hold graduate or post-graduate degrees. Suresh himself is a graduate from a reputed educational institution of Orissa. According to Suresh's confession, his gang always uses cars, albeit stolen ones, while committing crimes. They keep in touch with each other over mobile-phones.``This sort of modus operandi really poses a serious challenge to crime detectives,'' said Detection of Crime Branch Inspector P P Kanani. ``A police personnel of the level of constable or head constable cannot even dare to question such a person, even if he suspects him,'' another DCB official said.Gone are the days when gangs were known for the type of crimes committed by them. ``Now a gang like Suresh's commits various sorts of crime from house-break to vehicle-lifting to bag-lifting,'' said another DCB official. ``So, you cannot now point out which gang is involved in a particular crime, and this leaves the police in the dark,'' says sub-inspector G V Barot.Senior police officers are also baffled over the arrest of members of an inter-state gang of bag-lifters who used to pose as genuine passengers. ``Earlier, bag-lifting and petty thefts like house-breaks were committed by people generally living in slums, or by those from the low-income category, and detection was carried out keeping this in mind. It could never be believed that people staying in big hotels could commit such crimes,'' said Deputy Commissioner of Police Mohan Jha.Jha feels that detective agencies now need to change their line of investigation and keep a close watch on the movement of people staying in hotels and even people travelling by air on account of adoption of such sophistication in technique by the criminals.According to an official of the Government Railway Police, the modus operandi of the two drug-traffickers caught recently from Valsad Railway Station was also quite straightforward. ``They carried it in packets in suitcases, and no one would say they were criminals from their appearances,'' a GRP official said.
