Two senior citizens injured in snatching cases in Delhi

The women fell out of the cars they were in while trying to hold on to their bags containing jewellery and cash

Two elderly women, aged 74 and 72, allegedly got injured in separate incidents of snatching in west Delhi’s Mayapuri and Naraina by miscreants, police said, belonging to the infamous ‘thak-thak’ gang.

A week after the incidents, no headway has been made in the arrests of the accused. (Representational image)

A week after the incidents, no headway has been made in the arrests of the accused.

The women fell out of the cars they were in while trying to hold on to their bags containing jewellery and cash, police said, adding that the incidents happened on February 12 and 13, at 8.30pm, on Naraina flyover and near Mayapuri flyover, respectively.

Explaining the modus operandi, police said the accused on two-wheelers diverted the attention of drivers and occupants of the cars by pointing towards their tyres. They then opened the rear gates and snatched the bags from the occupants. Two separate cases of snatching were registered at Rajouri Garden and Naraina police stations last week.

On February 13, an elderly couple from northwest Delhi’s Rohini, Lalita Kapoor,74, and her 80-year-old husband Madan Mohan Kapoor, was travelling in a taxi to Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport. At 8.25pm, as their taxi reached near the Mayapuri flyover, two scooter-borne men signalled the taxi driver about his vehicle’s deflated tyre. “The driver stopped the vehicle, checked the tyres, and returned after finding the tyres were fine. One of the riders of the two-wheelers opened the left rear door and tried to snatch my handbag and pulled the bag with force due to which I fell out of the car. I suffered an injury in my right knee and became unconscious for a few minutes. The snatchers, who were not wearing helmets, fled with my handbag,” Kapoor said, adding that the bag contained gold and diamond jewellery weighing around 250 grams and her house keys.

In another incident, on February 12, two bike-borne miscreants snatched a handbag from a family -- native of Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh -- on the Naraina flyover using the same modus operandi, resulting in injuries to a 72-year-old woman, Anwas Fatima. She was with four of her family members in a car.

As per the FIR, the bag contained gold jewellery weighing around 100 grams and ₹30,000 cash.