Three 'history-sheeters’ held for daylight snatching of gold chain at Dhakuria
Telegraph | 27 February 2025
Three men were arrested on Tuesday morning in connection with the daylight snatching of a gold chain off the neck of a Dhakuria resident a few metres from her home.
Police said the men picked up in the case are history-sheeters and have been arrested multiple times by Kolkata Police earlier.
The police identified them as Bapi Sarkar, Bappa Sarkar and Amit Mondal.
“There are several criminal cases against them. They have been active in Burrabazar, Bansdroni, Muchipara, East Jadavpur and Regent Park police station areas,” said an officer of Kolkata Police’s detective department.
The trio was tracked using CCTV footage that showed their faces, cops said. Then “source network” and human intelligence was used to identify the men, investigators said. The police said the three had taken shelter in a hideout in Gosaba, on the southern fringes of South 24-Parganas, from where they were detained. They were later arrested after being brought to Calcutta.
The arrests came three days after the 57-year-old woman was robbed of her gold chain by three men who came riding a motorcycle, two of them not even bothering to cover their heads.
“They have been arrested earlier also. At least one of them, Bapi Sarkar, has been arrested in at least seven to eight cases earlier. He has criminal records since 2013. It is not that action had not been taken or that he has free access,” Kolkata Police Commissioner Manoj Verma said on Tuesday.
Several police officers said even if police act and make timely arrests, often the accused obtain bail after a few months in jail and go back to their old ways of life.
“This is a practical problem we face. It takes years and years to reach the conviction stage and for crimes that are not heinous, the accused easily obtains bail,” said the officer.
The incident of snatching in Dhakuria had left the family of Piyali De Ray shaken.
Footage from two CCTV cameras had emerged that showed three men robbing the woman and speeding away from the residential neighbourhood.
The Kolkata Police commissioner on Tuesday said there was a need to increase surveillance in the city and that the police has undertaken a project to install more cameras for crime detection.
“Most of the CCTVs we have are installed from the point of view of traffic. We depend on private and government institutions that have installed CCTV cameras. I have said to install our cameras from the crime point of view. A lot of assessment has been done and installation has been started at many places,” said Verma.
The police said the chain that had been snatched and the motorcycle that the accused had used were yet to be recovered.
Sankha De Ray, Piyali’s husband, when contacted on Tuesday evening, said he had heard about the arrests from news channels.
“We are hopeful that the chain will be recovered. We have no information about that,” Sankha said.