Hyderabad, June 18: A gang of at least five pulled the chain of the Secunderabadbound Chennai Express, snatched gold chains from the necks of three women through the window and vanished under the cover of darkness on Thursday.
The robbery took place between Nadikudi and Vishnupuram railway stations in Guntur district in the small hours of Thursday. The train had started from Chennai Wednesday evening. Interestingly, the same gang attempted a similar robbery on the Narayanadri Express a little later, but by then police had arrived there.
The incident took place around 2.20 am and most of the passengers were asleep. Some of those in the sleeper compartments had kept the windows open. One of the miscreants pulled the chain and the train stopped. Police surmise that two members of the gang got down and one climbed on the back of the other and through the open window snatched a 2 tola gold chain from the neck of passenger T Vanita. Next, they snatched chains from two more women in a similar fashion.
The robberies took place in coaches S2, S3 and S4. The robbers seemed to know exactly at which window their potential victims were sleeping. From this, police deduced that the gang was travelling on the train and had spotted their quarry before hand.
Panicky passengers looked for security personnel, but there were none on the train. A security posse a subinspector and four constables had got off at Nadikudi and the next was not due on the train until Miryalaguda. The train was stopped just after it passed Nadikudi, which indicated that the miscreants knew exactly where the escort party would get down.
It wasn’t until the train reached Miryalaguda that passengers could tell the police. Cases were registered at the Secunderabad railway station which will be transferred to the Guntur railway police shortly. Though initially police thought it was a gang of at least 15 persons, preliminary investigation revealed that it was no more than five.
Following the incident, the SPs of Guntur and Nalgonda were alerted and they took up vehicle checks and random frisking, which yielded nothing. Police said they have some clues and some suspects. “We are trying to find out the dialect in which they communicated with each other, which was heard by some passengers,” a source in the Railway police said.
A similar robbery that took place on the Simhapuri Express on June 12 could have been the handiwork of the same gang, police said. In 2001, 10 chain snatchings took place in the span of a few minutes on a train at Khammam.
——–Agencies