Patna: A man in Bihar turned a gold chain snatcher just to please his newly-wed wife and give her a gift almost every day, police said. The police arrested the 20-year-old thief.
Police said a middle-aged woman Geeta Devi accompanied by her daughter was returning home by an auto-rickshaw on Tuesday when a youth came near her and snatched her ear ring before fleeing the scene. The incident took place in Rajendra Nagar locality of Patna.
She instantly raised an alarm after which the passerby gave a hot chase and caught the man. They also recovered the ear ring snatched from the woman before handing him to the local police.
During interrogation, the accused identified as Sagar Kumar told the police that he had turned to crime as his wife expected gifts almost every day and even threatened to leave him if he didn’t fulfill her wishes.
“I was compelled to commit crimes since my wife expected gifts from me almost every day. She even had been threatening to desert me if I didn’t fulfill her wishes,” the accused told the interrogators.
According to him, he was deeply in love with his girlfriend and didn’t want to lose her at any cost. “So, I eventually began snatching gold chains and mobile phones from the people to please her. I gave many attractive gifts to my wife after selling the looted goods,” he confessed. He married his girlfriend some eight months ago and was staying in Nala road locality of the state capital.
Police are alarmed at a sudden spurt in incidents of chain snatching in the state capital. According to reports, more than 50 incidents of chain snatching have been reported from various localities of the state capital since January this year. Of them, 30 incidents were reported after June alone, indicating the daredevilry of the criminals.
The snatching trend of the criminals has also stunned the police. According to them, previously, the miscreants would flee the scene after committing the crime but of late they had been snatching jewellery at the point of guns and daggers.
The victims included the daughter of a former Congress lawmaker Nand Kishore Singh, wife and daughter of an executive magistrate based in Patna and the wife of a prominent road contractor.
“Incidents of chain snatching have indeed registered a sudden increase but we are on the alert. We have intensified patrolling and the accused will be caught very soon,” Patna’s senior superintendent of police Upendra Sharma told the media on Wednesday.
