Government Railway Police kiosk at Patna Junction. Telegraph picture

Patna, Jan. 4: Pickpockets at Patna Railway Junction have come up with a ploy to involve young children in their gangs to give shape to their motives.

The kids get about 10 days’ training after which they are ready for the job.

The Government Railway Police (GRP) have arrested two alleged trainers after a 10-year-old boy, involved in pick pocketing gang gave a detailed information about them to the police.

These men, during the interrogation, said they were in the process of training a dozen kids, between the age group of 10 to 15 years, giving them lessons on snatching and pick pocketing.

The boys were ready and were deputed in and around the railway station to carry on with the “work”.

GRP inspector Ramakant Prasad said a knife and four stolen mobile phones have been recovered from the two. They have been identified as Alok Kumar and Vinod.

“Both of them have been carrying out these activities for a long time and were released from jail recently. Vinod has been chargesheeted in at least 12 cases of loot. They have been operating in and around the railway station. But now with the police on strict vigil all the time, they were not able to carry on with their activities as before. As a result, they started giving destitute children lessons on how to go about the same,” Prasad said.

The men had gathered at least 12 children and had given them training to pick pockets and also taught the art of chain and bag snatching.

“These children do not have any homes. They live at the railway stations, begging and doing odd jobs. After the training was over, the boys were dispatched to work for them. They would hand them over whatever they earned in a day to these men,” he said.

It was easier for the children to go about proceedings as it was difficult for policemen to identify and nab them.

“The police are on the look out of criminals with past records and we have the backgrounds of most of them. There has been a lot of catches in the recent past and they cannot really operate by themselves here any more. All these contributed they started taking the help of these children. Children are hard to identify and catch. We caught Golu Kumar today who gave out details about the whole gang. They also gave key details that helped us nab the two men,” the officer added.