Jeans, t-shirt clad Gujarati girls-turned-highway robbers’ gang busted
The arrested girls are part of a well knit, nationally active highway robbers’ gang that targets young and middle aged males and makes off with their belongings and cash
MUZAFFARPUR They wear jeans and tees and take to the highways to prey on lone riders, blocking their way and demanding money. They worked in shifts of five members at a time too.
However, luck ran out for some 30 girls — all in the age group of 19-25 and claiming to be from Gujarat — on Friday, when the Muzaffarpur police swooped down on them when they stood on National Highway nos. 28, 57 and 77 — all linking north Bihar towns to Patna — besides their ‘hideout’ in a hotel in Maripur locality of the town area and took all of them into custody.
“They were actually waylaying scooterists and motorcyclists, blocking passage of light vehicles like cars and SUVs and demanding money on the pretext of working for some faraway and unheard of NGO,” police said.
If the claims of police officials are to be believed, these girls are part of a well knit, nationally active highway robbers’ gang which targets young and middle aged males and makes off with their belongings and cash.
Senior superintendent of police Vivek Kumar confirmed the arrest of all the 30 girls in a series of raids, conducted at different locations of the district after getting numerous complaints from victims of “snatching and loot of belongings by smartly dressed girls”. They mostly wore dark black/blue, or red blue tops and denims, attracting attention too in rural Bihar, where women dare not wear anything but a sari.
“I got frequent complaints from many people in the last three or four days. So, I set up a team under Jyoti, station house officer of women’s police station. This team first arrested six girls redhanded from Kolhua locality under Kanti police station of the district, some 40 km west of the district headquarters,” the SSP said.
Later, another team raided different places, including a hotel in Maripur locality on the information given by these girls. “The rest 24 girls were also arrested,” he said.
Kumar added that it was an all-woman gang, which had travelled from separate places of Gujrat to Bihar. On being asked about the modus operandi, he said the girls selected young and middle aged bikers and car owners to snatch their money.
“They were divided into five groups of six members each and would fan out on various highways and stop bikers by planting themselves in the middle of the road posing as workers of an NGO. First, they asked money to help poor children, or other helpless groups. On refusal, they would virtually take out money from the victims pockets or wallets,” said an official of the interrogating team, on condition of anonymity.
Police said the girls have admitted to have carried out similar operations in Saran and Gopalganj in the last one month before deciding to head for Muzaffarpur.
DSP (city) Ashish Anand said he was personally quizzing them on various aspects.
“It is interesting that they have travelled more than 2000 kilometres to reach Muzaffarpur. But what beats logic is how they struck upon such a brazen idea to loot people in such a daring fashion and openly. That is still beyond comprehension,” he said.
BLURB
The arrested girls are part of a well knit, nationally active highway robbers’ gang that targets young and middle aged males and makes off with their belongings and cash
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