A 51-year-old German woman sustained cuts and bruises after snatchers on a car dragged her around 150 metres along with her bag in the city’s Gulshan on Sunday.
She was returning home from her workplace with her husband on a rickshaw on road number 117 around 7:45pm when the white sedan with tinted windows blocked their path, her husband told The Daily Star.
A hand came out of the window, grabbed her bag, containing cash and identity cards, and the car sped away, dragging her alongside as the bag was strapped across her chest. At one point the strap gave way, he added.
“This is unbelievable. We never imagined something like this could happen here in Gulshan,” he said. He lodged a general diary with Gulshan Police Station.
“The money is gone, the identity cards are gone. Everything is gone. We informed the police but they are doing nothing,” he said.
The husband, requesting anonymity, said several incidents of mugging took place in Gulshan in recent times where the muggers used a white Toyota sedan to get away.
Gulshan police sources said a youth named Badshah, 25, was arrested in connection with the incident from below Gulshan Bridge yesterday.
Officer-in-Charge Mohammad Shah Alam of Gulshan Police Station said this gang uses a white Toyota car as it is very common in the capital.
“They are especially active in Dhanmondi, Gulshan, Uttara and Ramna areas. They usually go after foreign nationals as they tend to yield easily,” he said.
The situation improved over the last four months after Gulshan police put 11 additional round-the-clock checkpoints in the area, he said.
Some 15 to 20 members of the gang were held with arms and four white Toyota cars were seized over the past few months, he added.
“Many foreigners tend to go out alone at times when there are few people on the streets, which is when they are targeted by these snatchers,” he said, adding that most of these snatchings tend to go unreported.
-With The Daily Star input
