A wannabe airhostess and a Class XII student were arrested on Sunday evening for allegedly stealing money and credit cards from the handbag of a visitor at City Centre.

The fashionably dressed teenagers — daughters of a realtor and a bank official — were stealing from visitors and shops at the Salt Lake mall for the past couple of months, said police.

Sunandita, 19, and Sohini, 18, (names changed) were produced in court on Monday and granted bail.

Sunandita, who is training to be an airhostess, was arrested near the City Centre INOX around 6.30pm. She was with a boy, who, according to police, would have been her “next victim”.

Policewomen in plainclothes had been looking out for her in the mall for the past few days. Shop-owners alerted the police after seeing her on Sunday.

“Women officers took her into custody and started questioning her. She soon broke down and confessed,” said an officer of Bidhannagar (North) police station.

A woman who visited City Centre last week had complained at the police station that the two girls had stolen Euro 150 and three credit cards from her handbag.

Based on information provided by Sunandita, Sohini was picked up from her home in Baguiati. Her mother works in a nationalised bank. Sunandita, whose father is a realtor, lives in neighbouring Narayantala.

The two were also involved in shoplifting, said North 24-Parganas police superintendent Supratim Sarkar.

Shopkeepers at the mall had been lodging complaints of theft for the past two months. “By studying the footage recorded by closed-circuit cameras we found that some smartly dressed girls were present at the site of all the thefts. We were sure that seasoned criminals were not involved,” said an officer.

The police distributed a photograph of the two taken by a security camera among the shopkeepers to trace the girls.

“The girls sometimes would operate separately. They dressed attractively to distract their victims,” added the officer.

According to him, the duo used to visit shops together and ask for several items. One of them would pick up some of the items while the other distracted the attendant.

They targeted expensive cosmetics, jewellery and artefacts.