Ehey operate on same route

NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 28: Your pocket or your handbag may have been picked more than once inside moving buses. Yet, you may have never gues...

NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 28: Your pocket or your handbag may have been picked more than once inside moving buses. Yet, you may have never guessed that the same group could have been involved each time. For example, if you have been a regular on route numbers 353 or 534 for the past two years, it could have been Bunte, Arif, Yunus, Shera, Shehzaad Ali or Chota Yunus.

Thanks to an alert passenger, who contacted the police immediately after his pocket was picked, all of them are now in jail. In their twenties and school dropouts, these youths made a living out of picking pockets.

8220;They would go out in the morning, pick pockets and return home only after they made Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000,8221; says DCP south P.K. Srivastava. 8220;They said they had large families to maintain back home in western Uttar Pradesh.8221;

Investigations revealed they had been operating in Delhi for the past two years. During this period, they changed residences several times, shifting across south Delhi areas like Dakshinpuri and Okhla and east Delhi colonies like Anand Vihar.

For six months till their arrest, they were based in Anand Vihar. There, they they found their most lucrative and longest route ever: numbers 353 and 534. Every morning, they would board Blueline buses plying from Anand Vihar to Mehraulil and make several trips by evening when they had picked enough pockets to return home.

The youths told the police later that they used get a 8220;very large clientele8221; on the Anand Vihar- Mehrauli route. Their favourite targets were businessmen and office-goers who got off at Nehru Place. And they would always work in groups of three to four, armed with knives.

8220;Obviously, this couldn8217;t have happened without the connivance of the bus driver and the conductor. There is no way that they failed to notice the same youths boarding the buses for the past six months and make several trips on the same day,8221; says DCP Srivastava.8220;From now on we are going to detain the buses along with the bus drivers and the conductors, every time pickpockets are caught from inside a bus.8221;

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On February 25, the police arrested Bunte from inside a bus near Savitri Cinema in south Delhi. A knife was seized from him. The police were acting on a passenger8217;s complaint to one of the 70 special pickets set up in south Delhi to deal with cases of pickpocketing during peak hours.

Though Arif, Yunus, Shera, Shehzaad Ali and Chota Yunus slipped away on that day, the police tracked them down yesterday.