Chennai: A juvenile gang of students, six from two government schools, three from a polytechnic college and one from an arts college, on a smart phone snatching spree in Chromepet area, was caught by city police on Friday.
The involvement of school students came to light from a CCTV grab perused by cops from the crime scene.
The footage had two of the gang, clad in school uniform, snatching a woman pedestrian’s mobile phone, and fleeing on a bike. The victim identified as Aruna, (24), was speaking over phone along New Colony 6th street, Chromepet, on Wednesday night.
The quick-witted victim was brisk enough to memorize the 4-digit registration number of the bike, and preferred a complaint with Chromepet police as well.
This led the cops to look for clues, and ended up establishing the offenders being school students.
On Friday evening, a sub-Inspector and a constable, on patrol duty, spotted the bike with the same registration and two youngsters riding it. The bike was intercepted, and the duo was taken into custody.
Sustained interrogations led to their confession about petty crimes. With the information provided by the duo, rest of the gang members was taken in for quizzing. Based on the confessions made by the boys, they were produced before the Juvenile Justice Board in Chengelpet, which after hearing them out lodged them with the custody of the observatory home here in Kelly’s in the city on Saturday.
Cops recovered as many as nine snatched mobile phones, which they had in their possession. “The boys are from lower middle-class families. From the preliminary investigations, we believe that they were very new to this trade. They used to hang out together. None of them has bike, and they take turns to borrow bikes from their fathers. They gather information about women using phones on the road, and would identify women using smart phones before striking. Once snatched, they would switch the SIM cards,” said a senior police officer privy to the investigation.
