23 robberies on trains in 6 months
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Train thieves are on the prowl. Almost 700 sovereigns of gold have been looted in 23 cases of robbery from passengers on board several trains running on the Egmore-Villupuram section in the last six months alone.
A gang of thieves has been keeping Chennai GRPF personnel on tenterhooks for the past six months by looting passengers on trains bound to Chennai Egmore from the southern districts.
Robbers targeted passengers of AC III-tier coaches on 11 occasions and the rest in class-II sleeper coaches.
Passengers of Kanyakumari Express, Ananthapuri Express from Thiruvananthapuram and Rameswaram Express were found to be most vulnerable, as most robberies have taken place on board these trains.
An officer in the special team formed to nab the gang revealed to DC that a dozen youngsters hailing from different northern states book tickets like regular passengers, travel like regular passengers and loot other passengers.
After emptying the valuables in the baggage, they even replace the bags and travel with the passengers till Egmore where they catch the first train out to their northern cities.
inter-state gang behind thefts
A gang of thieves has been keeping Chennai GRPF personnel on tenterhooks for six months by looting passengers on trains bound to Chennai Egmore from southern districts.
An officer in the special team formed to nab thieves told DC that a dozen youngsters, between 20 and 25 years and hailing from different northern states, had split in to two groups and targeted passengers on board night trains departing from far off Tirnelveli, Kanyakumari and Thiruvananthapuram.
Each gang member books tickets individually in different classes on the same train months ahead of the journey, board at different stations and identify potential targets by befriending passengers after thorough scouting, the officer elaborated adding that their targets were AC-III tier and second class sleeper coach passengers.
When passengers are half asleep, the thieves spray anesthetic that puts them in deep slumber for hours and subsequently take away the baggage to their berth, safely unlock them and loot jewels, cash and credit cards, the officer narrated.
The best part of the plan unfolds thereafter when thieves replace the baggage at the same place. Curiously, the gang members stay in their berth and exchange pleasantries with the victim, who is unaware of the loot.
In most of the 23 cases, the victims realized that they were being robbed only when they opened the baggage at their homes. By the time victims crosscheck with relatives at the boarding place and reach the police station, the thieves are long gone, the officer added.
Cyber crime police untied the knot after scrutiny of passengers’ reservation list and found 11 north Indian youths had travelled on all the looted trains.
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