A 30-year-old gold chain snatcher, Hemanth Kumar Gupta, whose modus operandi involved flying down to Hyderabad from New Delhi, snatch chains from women and then catch a flight back to the national capital was arrested at the Hyderabad airport on Wednesday.

Police nabbed the culprit when he was getting ready to board a SpiceJet flight back to Delhi and recovered a stolen mangalsutra worth thousands of rupees from him.

Hemant had flown down to Hyderabad at least six times in recent months and snatched gold chains running into thousands of rupees each time, according to the police. 

Abdullapurmet Circle Inspector V Swamy said, “With the help of CCTV footage, we identified the accused and further investigations revealed that he was at the Rajiv Gandhi International airport on Wednesday morning. We immediately alerted the airport authority and three outpost constables scanned a couple of flights to learn that he was travelling to Delhi by SpiceJet Airways at 5:45 am. He was apprehended before he could escape with the stolen property.”