Nabbed: Robbery gang that used sex workers as decoy

A two-member gang from Delhi used sex workers as a decoy to commit robberies on the outskirts of the city. They were chain snatchers in the mornings and the evenings, and muggers at night.

Karan Singh, 24, and Surendra Gupta, 26, had a perfect plan: come down to Bengaluru, rent a house for a few days, rob people, go back to Delhi, sell the booty and take a break. Then repeat the cycle as and when required. They used a brand new Bajaj Pulsar in the crime.

They paid sex workers to lure potential victims. The sex workers would take the “clients” to an isolated place where the suspects would rob them. The gang would not have been caught but for a failed chain-snatching.

On Sunday night, the suspects robbed one Rajeev Bhat in northern Bengaluru, taking away his mobile phone and cash. The next morning, they tried to snatch the chain of a woman near MS Ramaiah Layout but she pushed them away and escaped. She later called the police control room.

Police swung into action and figured a pattern in the robberies and the chain-snatchings reported over the past few weeks.

A special team of policemen from Nandini Layout and Bagalagunte was formed to track down the gang. Police soon received the information that the suspects were loitering around Soladevanahalli.

When the police rushed there and tried to catch them, Singh and Gupta abandoned their motorbike and started running. When asked to surrender, they attacked sub-inspector Prabhu, probationary sub-inspector Raja Saab and constables Ganesh and Prakash with a knife.

Police had to shoot them in the leg in order to nab the accused.

N Shashikumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police, North, said the suspects had rented a two-bedroom house by telling the landlord that they were in Bengaluru for a short time for the medical treatment of their mother. They passed off a woman as their mother. Another posed as the wife of one of the suspects.

The gang is suspected to have carried out at least 20 chain-snatchings and robberies in Bagalagunte, Peenya and Soladevanahalli police station limits.

It mostly targeted the outskirts, Tumakuru Road and NICE Road, the officer added.