Four persons have been arrested in connection with the theft of bikes and 37 motorcycles worth Rs 21.35 lakh have been recovered from them, the police said.

Harikrishna (19), Anand (24), Harshavardhan (19) and Chandrashekar (25), all from Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh, are the arrested. With this arrest, the police claim to have solved several cases registered at the Commercial Street, Cubbon Park, Upparpet, Mahadevpura and other police stations.

According to the police, the suspects took advantage of the crowd and chaos during IPL matches near Chinnaswamy stadium, as well as election rallies and campaigning activities happening across the city.

The police suspect that the gang could have robbed more bikes than recovered so far. They would sell these bikes in both Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. They would tell the prospective customers that these bikes were seized by
finance firms as the customers defaulted on loans, the police said.