BENGALURU: A cook and a mechanic specialised in snatching gold chains of pious women immersed in singing bhajans by sitting next to windows in temples have been arrested.
Suspects Vasant Raju, 40, a cook from Bhadravati, and Ateek Ulla, 27, a mechanic from Shivamogga, were arrested by Nandini Layout police. A video of Oct 11 night, showing the woman who was singing bhajans in Ganesha temple, Shankarapuram, suddenly raising an alarm as her chain was snatched by a pair of hands that came out of the windows, had gone viral on social media.
"No one had seen the suspects who were standing outside the window in darkness. The CCTV footage close to the temple also didn't help reveal their identities," said an investigating officer.
The cops then scanned the footage of other CCTVs from the area and saw two men behaving suspiciously. "They had parked a motorbike a little away from the temple. After snatching the chain, they rode to Yeshwantapur railway station," police said.
It took nearly 20 days for the police to find that the duo had reached Shivamogga railway station. A team from Nandini Layout police station reached Shivamogga and started collecting more information on the two suspects. "We discovered that one was a resident of Shivamogga, while the other was from Bhadravati. However, when we reached their houses, their families told us that they were in Bengaluru for business," police said. Meanwhile, the suspects, encouraged by their earlier success, returned to Nandini Layout again. Soon, police traced them near Kanteerava Studio and arrested them.
"During interrogation, they revealed that they snatched two more chains in a similar way in a Davanagere temple and another temple in Nandini Layout," police said, adding, "Raju worked as a chef in Kanteerava Studio for over three years before returning to Bhadravati. Owing to a financial crisis, he and his friend Ateek Ulla decided to resort to chain snatching."