Police have arrested an eight-month pregnant woman, who has been a thief for a long time, on the charge of theft in Chittagong city.
Rabeya Aktar Neha, 23, who has built quite a reputation as a thief, was arrested from the city’s Agrabad area on Monday, said Double Mooring police station OC Md Mohsin.
According to police, the young woman has been a professional thief for a long time. Over the past year, she was arrested twice by police, including once just four months ago, for larceny and caught by locals four other times.
However, she was let go the past few times after she managed to garner sympathy because of her pregnancy. But this time, police decided to prosecute her after she was caught red-handed on a CCTV camera.
OC Mohsin said Rabeya is one of the top thieves of Chittagong. But she had only four cases against her until now as most of the time she managed to trick her captors into letting her go.
“She usually steals from houses in the early hours of the day, when people leave their homes to go to prayers or morning exercise. She uses that time to steal and quickly flee the scene,” he said.
The police official said that Rabeya admitted to stealing from hundreds of homes in Chittagong. “She has been using her pregnancy as a tool to steal.”
According to police and locals, Rabeya stole mobile phones and clothes from a home in the Agrabad area on Monday morning.
Later, locals identified her from the CCTV camera footage and notified the police. The law enforcers later caught her and recovered the stolen goods.
OC Mohsin said they started a new case against Rabeya following her arrest.
