Face recognition software helps nab 2 who stole ₹5L

After the withdrawal, she was getting documents photocopied from a shop when the two women involved her in a conversation and one of them stole the cash by opening her bag’s zip DEEPAK PUROHIT, deputy commissioner of police (west).

NEW DELHI: The use of facial-recognition software last week helped investigators arrest two women who allegedly stole ₹5 lakh cash from an MBBS-aspirant’s purse in west Delhi’s Tagore Garden on March 7, police said on Sunday.

The arrests were made on Saturday.

The arrested women, Nargis and Anjali, turned out to be habitual offenders who would target people in banks and malls and then use the services of an auto-rickshaw driver to flee, said Deepak Purohit, deputy commissioner of police (west).

The auto driver, Pramod Podar, who would allegedly charge ₹2,000 per day for his services, too has been arrested, said the DCP.

The victim on March 7 was a 20-year-old woman who worked at a Delhi government hospital and was preparing for medical college entrance exams.

The incident took place in west Delhi’s Tagore Garden on March 7 after she withdrew ₹5 lakh cash from a bank in the area, to be paid for her educational expenses.

“After the withdrawal, she was getting documents photocopied from a shop when the two women involved her in a conversation and one of them stole the cash by opening her bag’s zip,” Purohit said.

The act was caught on a CCTV camera installed in the shop and the faces of the two suspects were clearly visible in the footage.

When the police began investigating the case, they found the footage and began mapping the movement of the suspects in a three-kilometre radius using CCTV footage from other places, Purohit said.

Once the police confirmed that the women had boarded an auto-rickshaw after the theft, the police checked GPS data of all auto-rickshaws that had passed by the spot around that time.

That helped the police identify and arrest the auto driver Podar.

Alongside, investigators used facial-recognition software to match the faces of the suspects with those available with the police in their database.

It matched that of 35-year-old Nargis, who had earlier been booked in a similar case in Ashok Vihar in north Delhi.

Investigators said efforts were on to recover the stolen money.