A snatching on crowded Vivekananda Road on Monday afternoon and a theft by a help from a Kasba house led to the arrest of four persons in the city in the past two days.

Around 2.30pm on Monday, 28-year-old Sadhan Hudayit was stopped by three youths near the triangular park on Vivekananda Road. Hudayit, a resident of Madanmohanpur, in East Midnapore, was on the way to his office on Raja Brajendra Narayan Street, in Posta, where he also lives on weeknights.

One of the three pulled out a bhojali, held it against Hudayit’s stomach and asked him to part with his cellphone — a Nokia 6030. Hudayit tried to talk to the trio but the youths refused to listen to him. One of them snatched his cellphone, while another pocketed his gold chain.

“We received a complaint in the evening and were stumped by the fact that the snatching took place when the area was quite crowded. With not much to proceed on, we were waiting for calls from the cellphone,” said a senior officer of Girish Park police station.

“On Monday night itself, one of the snatchers made a call from the snatched cellphone. This helped us establish the location of the phone, based on information provided by the cellphone towers,” added the officer.

Harul Sheikh and Rafikul Sheikh, both in their late-20s, were finally tracked down to a red-light area in Aditya Mullick Lane. They were carrying the cellphone.

On the basis of leads provided by the two during interrogation, police raided a house in Ghutiari Sharif early on Tuesday and arrested Moni Lashkar. The gold chain was hidden under his bed.

The other two are also residents of the area.

In the other incident, officers from Burtola police station raided a hideout in their area and arrested Sonu Kumar, alias Bikram, on Tuesday.

The man, in his mid-20s, had allegedly stolen a gold chain, weighing around 2.5 bhari, and Rs 2,000 from a house in Kasba three days ago. He was working as a help in the house before the thefts.

The Kasba police station had sent out a lookout notice to adjoining police stations for Bikram.