New Delhi, Mar 20 (IANS): Five members of the Thak Thak gang involved in at least 500 cases of theft at traffic lights in Delhi-NCR have been arrested by Delhi police. Three country-made pistols, six live cartridges and 18 mobile phones were seized from their possession. A car used by the kingpin of the gang has also been seized.

The accused identified as Mehfooz, 35, Yusuf, 34, Nasir, 35, Shakeel, 34 and Mehtab, 34, were caught on Thursday night at Old Yamuna Bridge, Timarpur, Delhi.

The gang members used to travel in the seized car. They used to choose their target on busy roads and crossings, where traffic flow was heavy. They would target vehicles in which the mobile phone and purse were lying on the front seat or dashboard and only the driver was in the car.

One of the gang members used to go to the driver and start loudly banging on the driver's side glass and scold the victim for not driving safely or use some other false reason to make him roll down the glass. Meanwhile another member would come from another side and start banging on the glass to divert the attention of the driver. In all this, one of them would pick up the the mobile and purse and leave.

"They were using the recovered car to change their location from one place to another and to hide the stolen articles. They used to carry firearms to scare the public in case of getting stuck in a crowd," said Anto Alphonse, DCP North Delhi.