>From rags to riches-literally. They were rag-pickers scavenging for valuables
>from heaps of garbage. Or so everyone thought. But the three women were in
>fact picking their targets - locked-up houses --- which they later broke into
>and swept clean of valuables.
Banashankari police who caught the three women were shocked to find in their
possession of one kg gold and 750 grams silver ornaments worth Rs 40 lakh. More
shock was in store for the police when they came to know that the accused had
thrown away valuable diamonds into a drain mistaking them for ordinary stones,
police said.
The accused are Ammaiamma Srinivas alias Ammi, 30, of Gottigere Block, BG Road;
Gayathri Venkatesh, 30, of Koli Farm gate, off Bannerghatta Road, and Kantamma
Shiva, 30, of Udipalya New Colony, off Kanakapura Road. Banglore.
With their arrest, police have solved five cases of house burglaries reported
from Banashankari, Vijayanagar and Thyagarajanagar.
The accused would loiter in residential areas and identify houses with locked
doors. They would later enter the houses after breaking open the back doors.
"They used iron rods to unhinge the back doors," police said.
DCP (South) Sonia Narang said the three women were picked up by plainclothesmen
who found the trio loitering suspiciously in Jayanagar.
"Our crime staff had noticed that the three women never picked from the waste.
They were found inspecting houses. We brought them to the police station and
interrogated them. We then raided their houses and recovered the valuables,"
Sonia said.
During interrogation, the accused told the police that they threw some 'stones'
into drains. "Actually they were diamonds," Sonia added.
