New breed of snatchers daunt Dhaka residents
Mariam Begum was chatting with a woman sitting next to her on a city bus. It was going to Nabinagar on the outskirts of Dhaka. In the bustling Savar Bazar, the bus started moving slowly. Suddenly Mariam cried out as she felt a sting in her right earlobe and found her ear bleeding and earring gone. Outside, she saw a boy leaving the place in a hurry.
A private jobholder, Aminul Islam, was talking over his phone on another city bus. When it reached Mohakhali area, a hand from the outside grabbed his phone and took it away in moments. From the moving bus, he could do nothing but seeing the snatcher quickly disappearing.
A journalist of The Daily Star was playing games on his mobile phone in his private car. When it stopped at an intersection in Banani, he rolled down the window only to find a hand coming into the car and taking his phone away. Astounded, he saw the snatcher running away.
It was Jigatala. Shanta Sarkar was going to Dhaka University by a rickshaw from Dhanmondi. She saw two youths on a motorbike beside her rickshaw. All of a sudden, one of them grabbed her vanity bag and took it off her and the motorbike sped away.
These are only a few of the incidents of such snatching that the city dwellers go through ever day. Worse yet, the number of such incidents is increasing at an alarming rate in Dhaka city and its surrounding areas.
This is a new technique of snatching by a gang, popularly known as "Tana Party". They snatch valuables from passengers of slowly moving vehicles, usually waiting for their prey on busy roads. People fall victim to them when vehicles have to move slowly for congestion or at any intersection.
Police said they had information about this type of snatching by "Tana Party" and those who were involved in this kind of snatching were junkies. However, police could not provide any data about how many incidents of such snatching have taken place, as most of the incidents go unreported.
Unless the criminals take away any important valuable, the victims do not care to inform the police, even in cases when he or she suffers injuries.
Md Obaidul Haque, assistant commissioner of anti-dacoity and robbery team of Detective Branch (DB) of police, said, “It is true that there are several gangs in the city who are snatching valuables from slowly moving vehicles. But we cannot take action against them as most of the victims do not file case or general diary in this regard.”
The victim, Mariam, told The Daily Star, “I don't think that police can recover my snatched earring at all. That is why I don't want to go to police."
Driver of a city bus, Golam Mostafa, said he regularly experienced this type of snatching and the rate of this incident was on the increase.
“It has become commonplace in the city buses. I regularly hear that mobile phones or other valuables were snatched from my bus. I stopped the bus at the request of passengers but fail to catch the snatcher,” he added.
Mostafa said this type of snatching increased on the occasion of eid.
Hayat-uz-Zaman, officer-in-charge of Motijheel Police Station, said most of the Tana Party members were drug addicts. “Locals seldom hold them in confinement and hand them over to us after beating. But most of the victims are not interested in filing any case to avoid court,” he added.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments