Waking up with empty pockets: Mystery of Mathura's 'sleeping' thief finally solved

While sleep brings relief to many, some passengers in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura railway station recently found out that it could also leave one with a lighter pocket.

Over the past few days, several passengers travelling via the Mathura station had filed complaints of theft, but the identity of the thief remained a mystery up until Tuesday.

With complaints coming in, the in-charge of the Government Railway Police in Mathura, Sandeep Tomar, decided to get to the bottom of the mystery, reported NDTV.

To that end, Tomar began scanning CCTV footage from the numerous cameras placed around the station premises, and before long, caught the culprit red-handed.

Upon analysing footage from the camera inside the passengers' waiting room in the station, Tomar found that one of the seemingly innocuous occupants of the space, who was sleeping along with other passengers, was, in fact, the thief.

While the footage was initially unremarkable, it took an interesting turn when one of the occupants of the room made a move.

Checking first to see if anyone was watching, the man was then seen slipping his hand into the pocket of a sleeping passenger. While his initial attempts were unsuccessful, he ultimately succeeded, and extracted a cell phone from the passenger's pocket.

But he was just getting started. Soon after stealing a phone from his first victim, the man moved to the next passenger, checked if the coast was clear, and pulled out another phone from the unsuspecting, sleeping victim, before leaving the room with the loot.

With CCTV footage leaving no doubt about the identity of the culprit, the GRP swiftly tracked him down and caught him.

The thief, identified as 21-year-old Avnish Singh, was arrested on Tuesday, reported NDTV. He is a resident of Etah district and has since admitted to stealing five phones, the publication added.