The mahila metal gang

It is 5.23am in the Kavi Nagar industrial area of Ghaziabad. A torchlight flashes in the compound of E-217 and is closely followed by a group of salwar-kameez -clad women clutching garbage bags, their dupattas wrapped around their faces. They walk to a door and prise it open. Minutes later, 12 women enter the shop floor of Express Printing House, striding around the columns of paper and a piece of machinery. On sighting some aluminium sheets lying around, they break into a flurry of activity, grabbing, folding and packing the sheets into their roomy sacks. The dupattas slip, revealing their profiles. Some are just teenagers, some wear spectacles, and some have well-defined jaw lines. Twenty minutes later, nearly 500 sheets of aluminium and the women vanish from the scene.

On October 21, cameras 02, 04 and 05 of Express Printing House captured the Ghaziabad women’s daring break-in and robbery. A fortnight later, the Uttar Pradesh police have no leads on this all-woman gang of metal thieves. “We’re still investigating. We are searching all industrial areas of Ghaziabad, in jhuggi-jhopri settlements; we’ve sent people to Manesar also,” says the Kavi Nagar SHO Avnish Gautam.

Vineet Tyagi, the owner of the printing press, has just installed his eighth CCTV camera, trained on the small gate through which the gang entered. “I installed the other cameras about a year ago,” he says. “It was for monitoring my labour staff. I didn’t even think of robberies.” The area, he claims, is safe.

Buffeted by upscale residential colonies on three sides, and a police station close by, Kavi Nagar is a quiet industrial area. Small-scale steel industries sit next to hardware suppliers and software companies. Tyagi’s printing press shares E-217’s 1,600 sq yards with electrical shops and a fabricator. Fresh pamphlets advertising CCTV cameras adorn every gate. Guards are few, chaiwallas in plenty.

The police examined the footage and declared it an open-and-shut case. They would have the culprits in a day or two, they told Tyagi. That never happened. Instead, Tyagi espied the women again, barely days later. For nearly a week after the theft, he and fellow tenants sat in his office between 5 and 6 am, watching the images from his eight cameras on his computer screen. Bleary-eyed, they saw the same gang approach the gates and turn back every day. When the cops were informed, they assured Tyagi, “leopard bhej rahe hain .”

Several days passed, but there was no sign of the promised “leopard”, namely, two cops on a bike, as Tyagi explains. “We kept lathis in our office, but we didn’t want to take action without the cops. Lekin leopard aaya hi nahi .” He believes the cops are wary, as women are involved. “It’s a gender-sensitive issue now. These days, they only operate on electronic surveillance, no real legwork. They’ve become ineffective,” he says.

Tyagi had insured everything in his press except the metal plates. The stolen aluminium sheets have left him poorer by ₹4 lakh. The scrap value of the metal is around ₹150 per kg. The women made away with 350 kg in 20 minutes. “The scrap dealers will know that it’s stolen metal, so the rates will be lower, ₹80-90 per kg,” says Tyagi. Even at that low rate, the gang would’ve made about ₹30,000 for one day’s work.

Finding little help from the cops, Tyagi has turned into an amateur sleuth. That some of the women wear glasses is evidence that “they do zari work”; their salwars are hitched up means “they are ragpickers”… the speculations come thick and fast. He believes their modus operandi indicates they are repeat offenders. An extended weekend or public holidays are first identified. They recce the area and select a target. There are no guards between 9pm and 6am, say tenants in the area. The chaiwallas open well after 6am. So, the robbery is timed between 5 and 6am.

On August 15 this year, a long weekend, a similar robbery occurred at Shivas Reinplast on GT Road nearby. That involved 17 women. Four months ago, the gang was caught on camera stealing electrical equipment from Shershah Place on GT Road. Last year, around Diwali, they struck at E-217, making off with a heavy motor, around ₹70,000 cash and blankets. There were four women then. Tyagi’s cameras bore witness to that as well. The cops, however, seem unaware of the earlier robberies or the electronic evidence. “This (Tyagi’s) is the only case registered; we don’t know of any other robberies in the area,” says SHO Gautam.

“Metal ki chori to har roz hoti hai , (Metal gets stolen every day) but this is organised theft. There were four members last year, now there are 16 to 18 women in the gang,” says Krishan Verma, owner of Shivas Reinplast. Sixteen women had breached Verma’s 12-ft high compound walls, ignored the sheets of fibreglass on the premises and gone straight for a 90-kg steel die worth ₹70,000-80,000 in the open market. Even as two women hoisted the heavy steel cast and stowed it in their bags, the rest sat outside and convinced a guard that they were sifting scrap.

Verma’s camera too had taped the episode. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to retrieve the valuable evidence and chose not to go to the cops. A few days later, when he noticed the women strolling outside his factory, he directed his workers to pursue them. “We followed them past a police chowki, all the way to Loha Mandi,” says one of the workers, Satinder. Abutting the industrial area, Loha Mandi is home to the only jhuggi settlement in these parts. “They turned into the basti and disappeared,” says Satinder.

The gang’s single-minded pursuit of metal and machinery reveals some knowledge of industry. Is there an organised gang behind these burglaries? Are the women used as a front? The police have few answers. They have three teams on the case, and sketches of the women have been plastered in the industrial areas. The mahilachor gang is still at large, though… perhaps waiting to strike again when, proverbially, the metal is hot.