43 well-dressed females found begging

jaipur, July 13: At first glance they look like college students, attired in jeans, T-shirts and capris. But many of these 43 girls and women from Rajasthan created quite a stir during the past two days in the otherwise sleepy town of Latur, about 250 km from here.

The reason: they were accosting people on the roads, preferably men, and begging for Rs 50 or more.

The women, who have made a city lodge their temporary home, told people they were begging because they were in trouble and were going hungry in their home state.

A baffled Latur police picked up all 43 women on Monday evening for questioning.

“We will contact the police in Rajasthan , or wherever they have come from, to know their antecedents. We also want to find out whether they are on police record,” Latur superintendent of police B G Gaikar told TOI.

“We found it a little strange that such a large number of women claiming to be from a single place were begging on the streets, some of them dressed in jeans and tops. There are also some elderly women among them,” Gaikar said.

Inspector P S Kakade of the MIDC police station said the women arrived in Latur on Sunday and took up temporary residence at Deepak Lodge.

“They soon started moving around the city, accosting people and narrating their woes. They would say they had moved out of Rajasthan because of their poor financial condition and had begged for alms in different places in the country. They would claim that neither the police nor the public had objected to their begging in those places,” he said.

“We found no male companion with these women, though there are a few children among the lot. We took cognizance of their presence when complaints started pouring in. Women wearing jeans, appearing well-off and narrating a sorry tale while begging caused suspicion about their intentions,” Kakade said.

On being questioned, the women said they were in Ahmedabad before coming to Latur. “They have not committed any crime so far. They have only been begging on the streets and causing inconvenience to people. We plan to send them back to wherever they have come from,” Kakade said.