Milking the morning: How ‘doodh chor’ were caught in Delhi’s Uttam Nagar

NEW DELHI: A viral video of an autorickshaw surreptitiously doing the rounds of southwest Delhi’s Uttam Nagar in the early hours has helped police bust an unusual racket.

However, instead of gold or other conventional valuables, everyday dairy essentials like milk and curd were the items of interest to two persons allegedly at the heart of this unusual operation, earning them the moniker, “doodh chor”.

In the video from March 26, a couple of men were seen pulling up in an autorickshaw around 6.50 am and swiftly loading crates packed with milk pouches that had just been unloaded outside the shop of a vendor. The footage, which surfaced on social media two days later, quickly went viral and got police interested.


“A team analysed around 300 CCTV footages and activated informers to identify and trace the duo,” said DCP (outer) Vikram Singh. As some more consignments began mysteriously disappearing from outside dairy outlets in Uttam Nagar, what first appeared to be petty pilferage soon took another dimension, and cops found them on an unconventional trail.

On April 3, they received a tip-off that two persons — Mohit, 27, and Ayush Maan Pandey, 19 — were involved in these thefts and would be arriving near a church in Shiv Vihar, Vikas Nagar. A trap was laid, a three-wheeler tempo approaching from the Najafgarh drain side was intercepted, and the two were picked up.

Police searched the tempo and found 14 empty milk crates. The duo failed to produce valid documents for the vehicle; the cops later found out that it was stolen from Prem Nagar. Mohit and Ayush said they stole milk and curd consignments from Uttam Nagar and sold them to “supply points” in nearby Dabri and Bindapur. They were involved in the theft of 14 milk crates and 10 kg of curd, police said.

Mohit, the cops said, was previously involved in 38 cases of snatching and theft of motor vehicles, and was released from jail this Feb. The two were also found to have committed recent vehicle thefts; a stolen scooter and a motorcycle were seized from them.