Woman, her son arrested for shoplifting, 39 handbags seized

NEW DELHI: Every Sunday afternoon, she would leave her west Delhi home hoping to return with several lakh rupees of cash. Posing as a shopper, the 55-year-old woman

NEW DELHI: Every Sunday afternoon, she would leave her west Delhi home hoping to return with several lakh rupees of cash. Posing as a shopper, the 55-year-old woman would enter shops in busy markets across the city and steal other women’s bags.

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Police have arrested Savita Gandhi, her son Ajay and a Karol Bagh shopkeeper for their involvement in around 100 cases of bag theft. Police have recovered 39 handbags and 22 mobile phones they had stolen over the last few months.

Savita targeted only women knowing they carried cash and mobile phones in their handbags. After each theft, she gave the mobile phones to her son Ajay, who passed it to Suresh, alias Honey, a secondhand mobile phone dealer. Honey, police claimed, sent sold the phones in the Karol Bagh market.

Police say the woman may have stolen hundreds of phones as she has been stealing bags for the last one- and-half years.

Savita, who was earlier arrested for shoplifting, had served time in prison and is currently out on bail. The south district police were on the lookout for Savita after a woman filed a case of bag theft last month.

“While shopping, the woman had kept aside her bag containing three mobile phones, cash Rs 10,000 and debit/credit cards of different banks. Within seconds, she realised her bag was missing. She informed the shop owner. The CCTV footage showed the accused woman stealing the bag. In the recent weeks, around a dozen similar incidents were reported at Sarojini Nagar,” said DCP (south) Ishwar Singh.