Summertime Crimes: The wedding crashers are moving in for the kill

A bunch of kids and their handlers in a few Madhya Pradesh villages are keeping the city police on their toes This being the wedding season police sources said these children have been trained to steal from glitzy venues To thwart such attempts the cops are feverishly working on a plan In the first of a threepart series midday highlights the menace of these underage sidekicks between April and midJunePolice sources said the children accompany gatecrashers to enter highprofile wedding venuesmdashbanquet halls lawns or open groundsmdashand flee with cash bags and valuables Sources said the Crime Branch has prepared a list of historysheeters using their network of informants and technical data and retrieved the phone numbers of the freshly minted kiddie thieves and the leaders who are known as the Sisodia gangThe gang trains children at a few villages in MP and uses to target big fat weddings in Bihar Delhi Haryana Uttar Pradesh Punjab Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra Sources said the Maharashtra cops are tracking their active locations on a google map ldquoIn the last one month their movements have been noticed in Satara Mahabaleshwar Kolhapur Solapur Dhule Jalgaon Nanded Akola Navi Mumbai Mumbai and Thane in Maharashtra where big fat weddings take placerdquo said a Crime Branch officer from Thane ldquoAs the wedding season approaches the Sisodia gang members with the trained children fan in small groups across Indiardquo said the officerSummer means businessMost Sisodia gang members are from Kadiya Sansi and Gulkhedi villages of MP said a Crime Branch officer attached to the Mira Bhayandar Vasai Virar police The gang becomes active only during the summer Sources said cops find it difficult to enter the villages as the aggressive gang starts pelting stones at them In some cases they have fired upon visiting cops and grievously injured themArmed with mobile numbers of the gang members the cops are tracking their live locationsldquoThe wedding crashers accompanied by trained underage children enter banquet halls and mix with the guests People donrsquot suspect the crooks as they are welldressed with a gift packet in hand After a few minutes the trained tiny thieves sit beside the bride and groom or at places where valuables or cash bags are keptrdquo said the officer ldquoSince family members are often busy during a wedding the trained children decamp with valuables and the gang members disappear in their getaway carsrdquo added the officerPaid course on stealingAnother Crime Branch officer with Mumbai police said parents of these kids pay between R1 lakh and R5 lakh for the training on how to steal ldquoChildren are sent to these MP villages from different parts of India including Delhi UP Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra Once they are fully trained they are taken to wedding halls for the crime and later the booty is shared among them to run their housesrdquo said the officer requesting anonymity ldquoThe ganglords enroll children between 12 and 13 years so that they can easily be bailed out if caught by police These children undergo training of deceiving gullible pickpocketing theft in a crowd how to tolerate different police methods and shed crocodile tearsrdquo said the officerldquoThe ganglords charge for each trick separately If some children want to learn all the tricks their parents will have to pay R5 lakh After learning one or two tricks the children continue working with the gang saving money to learn other tricks of crimerdquo added the officer An officer from Thane said they first collected the mobile numbers of the gang leaders and then started analysing their call data records ldquoThis way we have learnt about their presence in Maharashtra where big weddings generally take place We have been closely monitoring their movementsrdquo said the officerNew SIM cards to dodge copsCrime Branch officers said the gang have become smarter after the cops tracked down them in some cases using their mobile tower locations after crimes at wedding venues ldquoNow the thieves donrsquot come to Maharashtra with SIM cards issued from Madhya Pradesh circle So before entering Maharashtra the kingpins arrange for multiple SIM cards from Delhi and UP to keep their intracommunication aliveBefore executing their theft plan the gang members switch off their cellphones remove SIM cards and keep these at their hideouts and enter the wedding halls sans any SIM cards in their handsets so that their cellphone numbers are not reflected during our dump data analysisrdquo said a Crime Branch officer attached to MBVV police These gangs also match up with the dress code to evade suspicion They wear sherwani kurtapajama sarees chhaniya choli and shoes and also carry an envelope in their hands after entering wedding venuesProblem of 537 NGONGO Neenv Social Welfare Association which is working to improve the lifestyle of povertystricken people in rural MP said that the literacy rate of these two village is around 95 per cent ldquoBut the remaining 5 per cent are hard to be pursued to change their criminal tracksrdquo said its president Jitendra SisodialdquoKadiya Sansi village is located hardly 120 km from Bhopal and Gulkhedi is at the distance of around 180 km from Indore Most of the people are literate but we are finding it very difficult to bring the illiterate people who are mostly indulged in theft and pickpocketing into the right trackrdquo Sisodia told midday ldquoWhenever we try to convince them to educate their kids they argue asking lsquoif they wonrsquot do these things how we will run the housersquordquo he addedSuccess in Mira RoadLast December the Kashimira police arrested four members of Sisodia gang and an 8yearold child involved in dozens of cases across Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra The cops found that they had struck at Oshiwara Santacruz Bangur Nagar at Malad Igatpuri and Sahar in the same monthThe arrest was the outcome of the efforts put in by a team led by DCP Amit Kale with the support of ACP Vilas Sanap senior PI Sanjay Hazare API Prashant Gangurde PSI Niri Javed Mulla constable Kavre Jarag Hanumant Tevre Sameer Yadav Sudhir Khot Anil Nagre and Sunny Suryavanshi API Prashant Gangurde of Kashimira police station said ldquoThe Sisodia gang arrived in Mumbai in a 7seater Ertiga They wore good clothes and entered various marriage halls With the help of the 8yearold boy they committed the theftsrdquoldquoThe kid would strike only when the groom and brides family members were busy dancing or cutting cake or involved in any other enjoyment The boy would pick bags with valuables and flee We found that the entire village of Kadiya Sansi village was involved in this crime We recovered R26 lakh of gold and cash from them and detected their role in 7 cases across MumbairdquoRs 26LCash valuables recovered from the arrested member by the Kashimira police7No of places where the gang struck last Dec