Barasat, Aug. 9: Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist was being played out in a Barasat neighbourhood till police got their hands on two little tribals.

Bhuto Thalko, 7, and his brother Bhutan, 4, worked for criminals who would make them slip into houses and shops at night through windows or holes in exhaust fans and other small openings.

The brothers were arrested from Hatkhola in Barasat in North 24-Parganas, about 30km from Calcutta.

The police said the children’s mother, Sulekha, had been deserted by her husband. She works as a domestic help in Hatkhola.

“We stumbled on them while investigating two cases of theft in cellphone and jewellery shops at Barasat’s Champadali More,” said the officer-in-charge of Barasat police station.

The police first suspected that children could be involved when they found that the exhaust fan of the mobile phone shop had been wrenched out.

“We were surprised to find the rolling shutter of the shop had not been disturbed,” the OC said, adding that an adult could not have got in through the exhaust fan hole.

The arrest of a gang of thieves 10 days ago led the police to the two brothers.

Much like Oliver Twist, an orphan who is sucked into the world of crime in London in the Dickens novel, Bhuto and Bhutan had a tough life.

“They were paid a pittance. But they received a good quantity of rice, which the poor family needed badly,” said an officer.

The boys have been sent to an NGO-run juvenile welfare home in Sodepur. They will be tried under the juvenile justice act, the police said.