Nagpur: Two drivers of an app-based taxi service have been rounded up for questioning over their roles in at least three cases of chain-snatching. The detection branch wing of Rana Pratap Nagar police station suspects the cabbies were, perhaps, the first to use cars to snatch chains, which is otherwise the handiwork of bike-borne thieves.
City police, already struggling to thwart street crimes, faced a fresh challenge since August 3 when it came to fore that two persons had used a car to snatch a chain from a senior citizen. Saroj Lonarkar, 61, was robbed of her gold chain at Pannase Layout by an unidentified person. The robber had approached Saroj asking for directions to go to Sonegaon after getting down from a car.
He had fled in the car after snatching the chain. An offence was registered at Sonegaon police station.
In a latest incident on Monday evening, 61-year-old Kiran Kapse was robbed at LIC Colony by an unidentified man as she was walking up the steps after entering the premises. The robber got off from a car and followed Kiran inside the premises before fleeing with her gold chain worth Rs 10,000. It was during this chain-snatching that the registration number of the cab was captured in a CCTV camera installed in the vicinity. The CCTV footage helped Rana Pratap Nagar police crack the case.
It was also reliably learnt that the cabbies had snatched the chain of a woman at Koradi earlier on Monday when the victim was on a morning walk.
Police said the cabbies had used their company car to perpetrate the chain-snatchings. They needed fast money as one of them is a habitual gambler while the other’s wife was pregnant.
