Delhi Police: Criminals involved in PM's niece purse snatching flouted traffic norms too

The two accused involved in snatching the purse from the Prime Minister's niece were not wearing helmets when they committed the crime, said DCP North Monika Bhardwaj on Sunday.

She added that it was unfortunate that the traffic police had not caught them beforehand for violating traffic norms before they carried out the crime.

"Both the accused were without a helmet on the day of the incident. We generally have traffic personnel stationed in the area but unfortunately they were not there yesterday," Bhardwaj said.

The DCP said that usually compliance with traffic rules is very high in the Civil Lines area where the incident occurred but the criminals got away by luck.

She, however, added that the police had acted promptly without even knowing the fact that the victim was related to a VIP, and had succeeded in nabbing one of the culprits while the second will be nabbed soon.

"In the snatching case registered yesterday, the Civil Lines police team and a team of special staff have caught one accused named Gaurav alias Nonu, who is a 21-year-old," Bhardwaj said at a press conference here.

She said that the recovery of almost everything which was snatched by the criminals had been done.

"We have recovered the purse of the victim along with the cash, two mobiles and most of the documents which were in it. We have also recovered the scooty used to carry out the crime," Bhardwaj said.

The police official added that the accused had a history of getting involved in fights and they were further investigating the links to find out what other crimes he was involved in.

"Lookout for his accomplice, Badal, who is of similar age is a resident of Sultanpuri, is on. The scooty belonged to Nonu's aunt, we are trying to find out his past involvement in criminal activities" Bhardwaj said.

She added that prima facie it seemed that the criminals had spotted the victim a kilometre away and followed her before snatching her purse.

The robbers on Saturday had snatched the purse of Damayanti Ben Modi while she was alighting from an auto-rickshaw outside the gates of Gujarati Samaj Bhavan in north Delhi's Civil Lines.

According to Damayanti, she had Rs 56,000 cash, two mobile phones and some important documents in the purse, which was snatched.