CHENNAI: After three different incidents of chain snatching were reported in Chennai on Saturday morning, the police swung into action and on Sunday released CCTV footage of the incidents along with license plate details of the motorbikes on which the offenders were allegedly travelling. Special teams have been formed to nab the culprits who reportedly stole a total of 16 sovereigns of gold from the victims in KK Nagar, Virugambakkam and Vadapalani on Saturday morning.
In each of the incidents, footage shows two unindentified men on bikes snatching the chains. Police were able to zoom in on the videos and identify the license plate numbers. Senior police officials said that while most crimes were committed by known offenders, chain snatching posed difficulties as more often than not the culprits are first-time offenders who are difficult to track.
“Almost 80 to 90 per cent of accused are juveniles and it has become easy for them as they cannot be sent to prison but to Government Observation Homes,” said a senior police officer. Despite more than 21,000 CCTV cameras having been installed across the city, chain and mobile snatchers have been unfazed. Almost, every day a complaint of chain or mobile snatching is reported, the victims usually being senior citizens or women. In fact, over 616 cases of chain snatching and 520 cases of mobile snatching were reported in 2017, compared to 448 cases of chain and 179 cases of mobile snatching reported in 2016.
Meanwhile, police caught three persons for allegedly attacking two people in different parts of Maduravoyal with weapons and snatching their mobiles on Saturday night. The accused were caught within hours.In one case, Ambuj Kumar (24), from Bihar, a BPO employee living in Appar Street, in Maduravoyal was walking past Narayana School in Karthikeyan Nagar at 10.15 pm when three men on a bike drove by and slashed his left shoulder and palm with a weapon. The trio sped off after allegedly snatching his mobile.
Fifteen minutes after Ambuj was attacked, the same persons are suspected to have attacked a 22-year-old man in the same locality before making away with his mobile phone.Police said Siddharth (22), a service engineer residing in Pallavan Nagar, Maduravoyal, was struck on the head with a sharp weapon by three persons on a bike who also stole his mobile phone. He was rushed to Kilpauk Medical College Hospital for treatment. He is said to be out of danger and a complaint was lodged at Maduravoyal police station. On Sunday, police arrested Shankar, Sekhar, Manikandan, all in their mid-twenties, in connection with the case. Three phones were recovered from them.