She had been swiping cell phones and handbags, especially from the fifth-floor food court of Forum, for the past month and a half. With complaints pouring in from shoppers and moviegoers, the management of Elgin Road’s lifestyle mall was struggling to plug its security sieve.

When Archana Hazra, alias Munmun Hussain, was finally netted on Saturday with her day’s loot of five handsets, one gold chain, two earrings and Rs 4,500 in cash, it was more a triumph of technology than a human dragnet. “We are grateful to the police for extending all cooperation,” says Forum general manager Ujjal. It was the mall’s hi-tech surveillance cameras and video storage-and-rewind option that helped identify and track down the woman who was filching handbags “in a flash”.

As mall after swanky mall hits town, swiping has got smarter and retail stations are leaving nothing to chance. City Centre, the newest craze, chooses to be safe rather than sorry.

“We have a hi-tech surveillance system, comprising three different kinds of cameras, to give us complete cover,” explains Ajay Bhowal, general manager, IT, Bengal Ambuja group, developers of the Salt Lake property. “The pictures are monitored from the IBMS (intelligent building management system) room and we can record and store images for 21 days.”

At 22, Camac Street, CCTV cameras cover every nook and cranny of co-anchor Pantaloons, while checkpoints at exit and entrance have a radio frequency identification device to detect any item not billed. “We try our best, but it’s virtually impossible to be totally foolproof,” admits R.S. Rekhi, head, operations (east), Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd, reporting at least one case of pinching a day between Camac Street and Gariahat.

Gautam Jatia, CEO, Emami Landmark, also complains of rampant rack theft. “The lifters' profile vary dramatically, from affluent ladies to students to drug addicts,” he says. MusicWorld, which suffers at the hands of blade runners — those who slice through the cellophane wrappers of VCDs and put back the empty packs on the rack — has in-store camera surveillance and sensormatic portals, which beep if the electronic bar-coding on a product is not demagnetised at the cash tills. “People still find ways and means to pinch tapes and CDs,” laments a spokesperson for the Park Street store.

Metro Shopping Centre, on Ho Chi Minh Sarani, has shown how investment in technology and manpower can at least act as a deterrent. “We have 39 CCTV cameras tracking movement on the three levels and 27 roving security personnel. In the past three months, we have had only one incident when a cellphone was stolen,” says administrator Surjit Singh.