Snatcher swallows earings before being caught

A snatcher's daring, daylight swipe on a 30-year-old housewife's, longer-than-usual dangling ear-ring in south Delhi's Saket kept the police on tenterhooks for three days. Jatin Anand reports.

A snatcher's daring, daylight swipe on a 30-year-old housewife's, longer-than-usual dangling ear-ring in south Delhi's Saket kept the police on tenterhooks for three days.

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No, they weren't running helter-skelter looking for him: identified as Ravindra, the assailant who had been chased down by the victim's own relatives and handed over to the police within minutes. In fact, all the effort was directed at recovering the booty he'd swallowed.

"Since his remand was supposed to expire on Tuesday, we had to subject him to a different kind of 'pressure' to recover the swallowed earring," said a senior police officer. "We fed him a dozen bananas and other assorted fruits to speed-up his bowel movement."

A resident of Surajkund in Faridabad, Ravindra had swooped on the victim's earring at a traffic signal in south Delhi's Khanpur around 8:20 pm on Friday evening.

She had been on a visit to her brother's residence in adjacent Dwarka to celebrate the birth of his daughter.

As the vehicle remained halted at the signal, Ravindra snatched her earring and made a run for it - only to be chased down by two of her male relatives even before he could barely cover 50 metres.

Over the next two days, Ravindra had two constables standing guard outside the toilet at the Saket Police Station - encouraging him to 'go about his business properly'. Fortunately for the police, their efforts finally bore fruit — twice.

"While one half of the earring was recovered by Sunday morning, the rest was recovered by Monday evening," the officer said.