New Delhi, April 12 (IANS): Delhi Police on Friday claimed to have busted a gang of thieves, who used to target passengers travelling in the metro and arrested five women, an official said.

The accused, all residents of Anand Parbhat, used to carry infants in lap to divert attention or to pick up quarrels from fellow passengers on the pretext of raising false allegations.

According to police on April 9, one woman reported that while she was travelling by metro train on the blue line between Rajiv Chowk Metro Station and Rajendra Place Metro Station, her purse containing Rs 50,000 cash was stolen by some unknown persons.

During the probe, the police team scanned the CCTV cameras and tracked the movement of the victim till she boarded the Metro train on the blue line towards Rajendra Place.

“Thereafter the CCTV footage of Metro bogey was checked and it was apparent that five women surrounded the complainant from all sides in the crowd. Surprisingly, two of them were carrying infants in their laps and both were trying to divert the attention of the complainant,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (metro) KPS Malhotra.

The police team then followed suspects' movements at R K Ashram Marg where they were seen exiting from the station and boarding in an autorickshaw.

“All the accused women were nabbed, on the basis of specific information, from the Connaught Place area on April 10 when they were moving towards Metro station Rajiv Chowk,” said the DCP.

On interrogation, the accused revealed that all of them joined together to operate in a group with the common intention of committing theft at crowded Metro stations.

“Each of the accused persons had specified a role in the group and all of them operate in unison. The accused would mainly target unsuspecting women travellers. All the arrested accused persons were already found involved in several cases of theft inside metro trains,” the DCP added.