Cuttack, July 18: Chauliaganj police have busted a criminal gang involved in at least 22 chain-snatching incidents in the twin cities and arrested six of them.

The accused have been identified as Suresh Sahoo, 32, Sanu Behera, 22, Priyaranjan Mohapatra, 29, Prakash Padhiari, 25, Shankar Mohanty, 28, and Dinesh Majhi, 19. Suresh hails from Kandarpur and Priyaranjan from Khurda, while rest of the gang members belong to Cuttack.

Thirteen gold chains weighing 100 grams, four motorcycles, as well as six mobile phones have been recovered from the gang members, said deputy commissioner of police Sanjeev Arora.

He said the gang had been involved in several incidents of loot in the twin cities, rural pockets of Cuttack district, Jagatsinghpur and Khurda areas.

The police said the gang leader, Suresh Sahoo, used to work as a goldsmith at Kandarpur and had lured the youths to join the gang by providing them large amounts of money before the crime.

Sources said Sahoo had also told his gang members that he had links with several police officials and other higher-ups. He used to visit police stations while asking his gang members to observe from a distance.

"He used to enter the police stations nonchalantly and stay inside for a few minutes pretending to make some sort of inquiry," said a senior police official.

The police said Sahoo had hired at least four other criminals - two are in jail for a chain-snatching case and firing incident in Dhenkanal and two others are absconding.

Preliminary investigation reveals that three out of the four motorcycles seized from the gang were the stolen ones. The criminals used real vehicle registration numbers to mislead the investigators.