Once ice-cream snatchers, two held for turning rogues in Shahdara

While people would relish an ice-cream in Shahdara's sweltering heat, Rahul and Habib Khan would lie in wait on their high-speed motorcycles. After stalking them for some time, the duo would throttle towards the onlookers and snatch their ice creams. Emboldened by the fact that nobody would report about ice-cream thefts, the duo went on a snatching spree in Shahdara district and were involved in more than 250 cases of snatching. The two wannabe stunt drivers were arrested and their snatching spree was put to an end, police said on Thursday.

The accused have been identified as Rahul and Habib Khan, who had learnt dangerous stunts from YouTube and would showcase their stunts near desolate railway tracks and would also target people near Shahdara Metro station.

"They became confident after they managed to snatch ice-creams from people. But they soon became a menace as they went on a snatching spree. They would also perform dangerous stunts in Shahdara area putting everyone's lives at risk," said a senior police official.

The case came to light on January 23, when the complainant, Umed, had reported that while he was going towards Geeta Colony after attending his classes, he was intercepted by two people on Bajaj Pulsar motorcycles. Further, a superintendant Geologist from ONGC,was also attacked by the duo and fled with an Apple I-pad, 64 GB pen drive, 1 TB hard disk containing 975 GB data from the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur.

Later on January 29, information was received that the snatchers would come around South Ganesh Nagar. Acting on the information, a team laid a trap and arrested the accused. "During their interrogation, they informed the police that they used to operate in and around Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, Shahdara and several areas in and around Central and South Delhi," said DCP (Shahdara), Nupur Prasad.

The accused had taken to stunt driving and had bought the high-speed bikes to perform stunts and also race ahead of the police. "They had bought the bikes with the money that they got from snatching. They used to snatch at least 10-15 phones on a daily basis and would make around Rs 4,000 on a daily basis. They had learned several dangerous stunts from YouTube and then would also upload some videos," the official added.