The police arrested five call-taxi drivers for chain-snatching from women pedestrians in Velachery, Adyar, Saidapet and adjoining areas, over the past three months.
According to the police, Ranjith Kumar (31) of Perumbakkam, Senthil Kumar (34) of Thanjavur district, Muthukrishnan (35) of Taramani, Nagarajan (31) of Perungudi and Loganathan (30) of Velachery teamed up to commit the crime.
The five men had enlisted their vehicles with a travel agency in T. Nagar. As they couldn’t pay their vehicle dues, they decided to take to crime for easy money.
“After work, they went around on motorcycles and snatched chains from seven women walking in isolated locations. A special team formed to apprehend the snatchers arrested the five men on Wednesday night, and recovered 26 sovereigns of gold jewellery from them,” said an investigating officer.
The five men were remanded to custody and sent to Puzhal prison on Thursday.