28 July,2011 06:48 AM IST | | Arpana Chotalia and Maleeva Rebello
New modus operandi of thieves in ladies compartments: Asking a seated passenger to hand over bags from the overhead rack; by the time the owner realises the folly, the bag and the thief are far away Pass the bag, please: As the station approaches, a woman hanging at the door gestures to the seated passenger requesting to pass the bag kept on the luggage rack Helping hand: The passenger, unaware that the woman is not really the owner of the bag, gets up and picks it off the overhead rack. Illustrations/Satish Acharya As easy as apple pie: As soon as the passenger hands over the bag, the woman at the door jumps off the train and vanishes in the crowd at the platform
If you make your way home from work on the local trains running after 8 pm, then stay alert, and exercise caution: the handbag thief may be lurking nearby, waiting for an opportune moment to grab your precious belongings and jump off the train, leaving you, quite literally, in the lurch.
On July 11, Rupa Tripathi (37) boarded a Virar bound fast train from Mumbai Central station at 8:45 pm. She took her seat in the first class compartment, stationing her coffee-coloured handbag on the overhead metal rack.
At Mira Road station, a young woman in a green salwar kameez, aged between 22 and 23 years, boarded the train.
When the train was nearing Bhayander station, she got up, asking a co-passenger to hand her a bag from the same rack, and jumped off the moving train.
Rupa soon realised that it was her bag that the woman had jumped off with, but by the time she pulled the chain, the train had almost reached Nalasopara station.
A police constable, who was had been stationed in the adjacent first class ladies compartment, said that he was unable to nab the miscreant, as a barrier between the two compartments had made it virtually impossible for him to come across over.
Tripathi nabbed the lady who had passed her bag onto the thief, hauling her to the railway police.
The middle-aged woman, however, pleaded ignorance, claiming that she had no involvement in the racket. She could not produce a valid ticket when asked for it.
The railway police asked the victim to register a complaint at Vasai.
The next day, Rupa's husband Sanjay got a call from a man who identified himself as Rajubhai, and claimed that he had found her bag on the tracks at Bandra, with a chloroform bottle and a pen knife stashed inside it.
All of Rupa's important possessions, such as her PAN card, her first class railway pass, her credit cards, and Rs 900 worth of cash were gone.
Imagine Rupa's surprise and consternation when she was told by her colleague Sarita a few days later that her bag had been stolen on the same evening, in an uncannily similar fashion.
DEJA VU?
Sarita Rawal (name changed) boarded the Virar bound fast train at 8:40 pm from Dadar. She was seated to the right of the door in the first class compartment.
Her purple coloured handbag had been kept on the overhead rack, when a woman wearing a green coloured salwar kameez pulled the bag, and jumped off the moving train.
Thinking fast, Sarita got off the train at Bhayandar and took a return train to Mira Road, where she spotted the robber waiting for a train.
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She immediately nabbed the woman, and the two were embroiled in a heated argument, each claiming that the bag was hers.
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When Sarita insisted that the woman accompany her to the police, she made a dash into a passing Virar local.
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Fortunately, Sarita had managed to hold on to her hang bag through the entire shouting match. Upon checking, she was relieved to find that her belongings were intact.
