Christine boarded a train in Cologne, Germany, to travel to Frankfurt. Approaching her first class seat, she saw a man in the seat opposite hers with his head on his arms on the table, probably dozing.
Next, she noticed two young men walking in the aisle near her seat. Unconsciously, her mind flashed about the first guy: “What a handsome face.” Then: “Strange that he carries his stuff in a plastic grocery bag.” Then: “Yet he’s in the first class carriage.” Then, about the guy directly behind him: “Is that a USB cord dangling from the phone in his hand?”
All this before she even sat down.
Immediately then, her sleeping seatmate jerked awake and lunged for the handsome-faced guy.
The guy had grabbed the man’s phone, which had been plugged in, and the man had felt the cord pull away.
Theft on a train
Christine watched the two grapple and saw a beer bottle flailing wildly, beer spraying everywhere. She wondered if the beer bottle would become a weapon. She stood there, watching the men, not knowing if she should help physically or not, while the victim was screaming for the police. Seconds later, a pair of civil police officers jumped aboard and arrested the boy.
One officer handcuffed the boy and lead him off the train. The other settled in with the victim across the table from Christine. Christine was asked to be a witness, but she had to admit that she hadn’t seen the actual grab.
As the train pulled out of the station, the police officer took a statement from the victim, which is how Christine came to know certain details, for example, that the thief was from Morocco.
Christine did not know how the police managed to arrive within seconds, but I think I do. I believe the police had had an eye on the boy and had expected him to make a move like this. I believe they were trailing him (as Bob and I do when we’re thiefhunting) due to his behavior. Trains are favorite territory for thieves, and though some use diversion and strategy, many are simply of the grab-and-run variety. There is so much pickpocketing and bag-snatching on trains that many countries have dedicated train (or transport) police forces.
We, as passengers, simply need to practice safe stowage of our stuff to thwart the bulk of the theft. That means placing valuables in more protected places, and realizing that a train car is not a safe haven. Anyone can come aboard. Often, they don’t raise eyebrows as these young men did. Bad guys infiltrate our perceived refuges and have free rein, like a wolf in sheep’s clothes. Highly successful thieves look like lawyers, like businessmen, dressing the part, with polished shoes and handsome briefcases. Working with police as we do, we are privileged to see photos of many of these, but we are not allowed to post them.
The thief’s goal would have been to steal something and get off the train before it pulled out of the station, putting instant distance between him and his victim. Thieves are not rocket surgeons, however, and do not realize that their behavior highlights them in neon yellow to trained eyes.
Now here’s the irony: Christine is a television host. She was on her way to Rome to shoot a story on pickpockets, with us.
July 26th, 2015 was a typical hot summer day in Rome. My family and I decided to visit the Bhorgese Museum on the north end of the city. Having thoroughly enjoyed the gallery and garden, we made our way to Spagna metro stop to pick up the A line to back to the center of Rome.
This is when it got interesting. There was a throng of people waiting to get on the train. All of the warning signs were there that this was a pickpocketer’s dream. As we pushed through the doorway like some giant human amoeba, I recalled feeling a slight brush; a nudge, a hand, a map being pushed against me. Whatever it was, it made me instinctively put my hand on my iphone in my left pocket.
Pickpocket Foiled
Imagine my surprise to find someone else’s fingers firmly levitating my iphone. I turned to the left and pushed back against the mousey devil behind me and told him to keep his hand off my phone. Sure enough, I noticed he had been poking an old tourist map at my waist, attempting to conceal his bad intentions.
I felt a surge of adrenaline and indignation, as I loudly proclaimed our fellow passenger a pickpocket, to which, all turned and gazed upon him (awkward moment).
Still bothered by his trickery, I thought to myself, time for a close-up picture of my failed pickpocketer friend. This, of course, made him uncomfortable. I noticed that he attempted to cover his face with the map. Leaving no doubt about his mal intent, he rapidly exited the train at the next stop to a smattering of applause.
I felt vindicated and empowered—He had failed! He picked the wrong target. Though I looked the part of average tourist with my baseball cap on, I’m probably the worst person to try this foolishness with. You see, I have spent the last 25 years studying the subtle details of those molecular pickpockets, Viruses, which take over cells that they slip into. I’m used to analyzing every last detail about small things.
He couldn’t have known that he picked the wrong guy. But since he is just like the viruses that I study, I couldn’t help but have many questions about this fellow; How? Why? Does he feel any moral dilemma with his craft? I even felt a bit of a thrill after foiling my pickpocketer. No doubt, I enjoy this high-stakes game. I’m ready to troll for the next one when I’m in Rome again.
Dr. Virus
P.S. Love your website. Keep it up. If the Rome Police won’t do anything about it, at least we can expose the threat. I think the best thing to do is to take pictures of these people and post them online.
This young pickpocket has just returned Bob’s wallet and is now nervous and uncomfortable, trapped on a moving train with her victim.
Hunting Pickpockets on Rome Metro
As we rode the steep escalator to the depths of Rome’s Termini Station we marveled at the swirling, pushing, roiling crowd of passengers. Before we reached the bottom, we could see several uniformed officers on the platform. Bob groaned.
“Bad luck for us. There won’t be any pickpockets with the police around.”
It was nearly noon. We thought we’d have a quick look anyway, then surface for a lunch of Roman-fried artichokes and zucchini flowers. But as we were funneled off the escalator, we immediately recognized the abused-looking face of a pregnant pickpocket we’d filmed years earlier. Again, she was big with child. The woman, perhaps 20 years old now, swayed on her feet and smiled as she kidded with the police officers.
What was going on?
Had it not been for that familiar face, we wouldn’t have looked twice at a trendy teenager nearby. The girl wore cute, tight pants rolled up at the cuffs, a clingy, low-cut top, and the latest in designer eyeglasses. She wore a gaudy choker and makeup, her lips darkly outlined with pencil.
Two female pickpockets in Rome’s subway. The one wearing a cap later stole Bob’s wallet.
In no way did she fit our previous pickpocket profile. Her dark hair was short and straight, neatly cut at shoulder length, sticking out beneath a black baseball cap. Slung across her chest, she carried the latest style shoulder-bag, the body-hugging, wide-strapped leather pouch with extra cellphone/glasscase/coin compartments attached to the broad strap. Smart and sassy, she resembled not-at-all her dowdy, pregnant friend. The girl was suspect by association.
The two girls conversed together, and with the uniformed officers as well.
At first we assumed the girls had been arrested and were awaiting police escort to the station. How silly of us. After five or six minutes of chat, the girls and officers wandered from the bottom of the escalator to the train platform, which was momentarily quiet. Their joking and laughing continued, and there was even a little friendly physical contact initiated by one officer.
A new crowd soon built up on the platform, and our attention turned to a perfect suspect, a pudgy male. We watched his eyes, and the way they locked onto another passenger. He moved to his chosen one and stood close.
The train swooshed in and stopped abruptly. Its doors slid open and clotted streams of human beings gushed forth, flowing, somehow, into the mass of bodies waiting on the platform, coalescing into a solid, writhing, determined organism. The new being contracted, then broke into bits, dispersing like grains from a punctured sack of rice.
The pudgy male followed his mark onto the train, shuffling in tiny steps so close, so close. He wouldn’t allow anyone to separate them. Bob and I followed, intending to film him, but we were roughly shunted to the right by a last-second surge of passengers as the train doors tried to shut. There was no way we could filter our narrow bodies through the dense pack to get closer to Pudgy.
Three of the many pickpockets surrounding us on the subway train in Rome.
Pickpockets everywhere
Before we had time for disappointment, Bob turned to me.
“All around us,” he said under his breath.
Yes, four young men, on three sides of Bob and one behind me. They were eyeing each other. The tallest, in front of Bob, already had Bob’s wallet.
“Give it back.” Bob said, firmly but quietly. “Give me the wallet.”
No response. Four pairs of wild eyes now flicked everywhere but at each other, everywhere but at their victim.
“Give me the wallet.” Bob hardened his voice and stared at the tall one.
Plunk. The wallet hit the floor and the men stepped aside.
I picked it up as the train reached a station. Bob was still glaring at the four. He intended to follow them onto the platform.
The foursome got off and we were right behind them. But there, on the platform, was the pudgy male we’d followed earlier. We dropped the four and snuck up on Pudgy, who was now behind a crowd waiting to board while a stream of others disembarked.
Bob’s camera was still rolling.
“Pudgy” prepares to lean toward his victim, whose wallet he steals. (I know, bad quality photo. It’s a frame-grab from video in a dark area.)
Behind the waiting passengers, Pudgy did a slow lunge, reaching his hands as far forward as possible. Bob leaned dangerously against the train, straining to see, angling his camera. Pudgy stretched toward a man who shuffled slowly toward the train door. With both hands, he opened the Velcro flap, then put one hand right into the cargo pocket low on the man’s thigh, and came out with a wallet. He turned and rushed away down the platform, suddenly followed by a cluster of children—like the Pied Piper. We followed him to an escalator where a security guard, watching our pursuit, shouted “Kick him! Kick him!” over and over. Obviously, Pudgy was well-known in the area, and frustrated guards have little authority over crimes they do not witness.
Where were we? I gave Bob the recovered wallet and he replaced it in his fanny pack. We turned to look for a station name and there, standing in a just-arrived train, was the trendy teenager in the black cap.
We dashed on before the doors slammed shut. The train lurched and gathered speed. Squashed against the door, we scrutinized the passengers. Now I noticed that the teen girl wore the small crude tattoos often associated with criminal tribes: two on her upper arm and at least one more on her hand.
“Give me back the wallet,” Bob said quietly. I didn’t even know she’d taken it. She tossed her hair and looked away, inching closer to the door.
“Give it back.” Bob pointed his sunglass case (containing a hidden camera) directly at her. He’d already filmed her hand in his fanny pack. Now he focused on her face.
She licked her made-up lips and blinked nervously, trapped beside her victim. Finally, she unzipped her shoulder-bag and removed Bob’s wallet. She handed it to him meekly.
The train came to a stop and the stealthy opportunist made a quick escape. Bob and I returned to Termini, ready for lunch. We’d only been three stations away.
Back at Termini, as we shuffled along with the mob toward the escalator, we saw the uniformed officers again, and with them, the pregnant pickpocket, the trendy teenager, and at least a dozen others.
Pickpockets and police: friends? or what…
Instead of surfacing for lunch, we lingered on the platform, watching the interaction. The area had cleared of passengers. Six or eight police officers sauntered around among the 15 or so in the pickpocket gang. There were women with babies on their chests, women without babies, and many children. All of them, pickpockets and police, loitered comfortably together in a loose and shifting association. Passengers began to arrive again, but the platform was still pretty empty. A clutch of women formed a huddle nearby, bending inwards. Soon they straightened, a knot opening like the petals of a daisy, or a fist opening to reveal a treasure. As the women moved away, each counted a wad of bills and stuffed them into a pocket or backpack. They made no effort to hide their swag.
“Pudgy” the pickpocket on the Rome Metro train
Later, analyzing the footage of our subway exploits, we were astonished to see the trendy teenager lift another wallet before she took ours. Her victim was a woman who clutched her handbag to her chest. Beneath it she wore a fanny pack. Bob’s camera, held low as we entered the train, recorded what our eyes had missed: the trendy teenager’s tattooed hand unzipping the fanny pack, removing a wallet, and rezipping the bag. Then she brought the stolen goods up to her own bag, and out of the camera’s range. Two wallets in two minutes! That could add up to serious money, depending on how many palms had to be greased.
Unfamiliar fingers fiddled with the flap of my bag.
I let them. My American Express card was in the purse, along with a small camera and other things I’d hate to lose. Still, out of the corner of my eye, I watched without interfering.
I was wedged like a flimsy pamphlet between big brass bookends, and about as immobile, too. We had just boarded the metro train at Omonia Station in downtown Athens. The train was packed with it’s usual proportion of locals, tourists, and pickpockets. It was hot, airless, and odoriferous to distraction.
Bob and I had been separated by a force from behind as we boarded the car in a crush of bodies. The power behind the force stood between us: two large men in their thirties. I had one hand on a ceiling strap, the other protectively clutching a cheap-looking canvas bag on my shoulder, which perfectly disguised my laptop. My purse hung low and appeared vulnerable.
The fingers tugged gently, but I knew it was futile. I had tied a small knot in the leather cord of the drawstring bag. I allowed the man to try solely to confirm to myself that he was what we suspected him to be.
Pickpockets on trains
Bob and I had watched these two on the platform. They were neatly dressed, clean-cut, and spoke Russian. They stood apart from one another as if they weren’t together. Their behavior on the platform made them suspects. When an uncrowded train came and they didn’t get on it, they were as good as guilty in our minds. Then again… we didn’t board that train either.
A train in Athens
We squeezed onto the next sardine can and Boris and Igor (as I’ll call them) pressed themselves in behind us, then between us. Igor bumped hard against me, spinning me against my will as he orbited around me. Just a little self-serving do-si-do accompanied by a fleeting expression of apology as he positioned himself to his secret advantage. Physical contact was unavoidable in the over-crowded car. Against my forearm, I could feel Igor’s wrist twitching as his fingers played with my bag.
The two men looked everywhere but at me. As our favorite New York cop taught us, watch their eyes. They seemed to be making unnecessary head movements, looking here and there as if they had no idea what was happening down below and were not responsible in the least for any mischief their hands might do.
Igor didn’t mess around long. At the next station, he slapped his forehead in a pantomime of stupid me, I forgot!, and slipped off the train. Boris followed. Bob and I did not.
Then they surprised us: they reboarded the other end of the same car, enabling us to observe them. Although the Russian-speaking pair towered over the short Greeks and most of the tourists, our line of sight wasn’t perfect across the mass of passengers.
Igor looked at Boris and Boris looked away. They had sandwiched a woman tourist and separated her from her husband, just as they had done with us. This was their method of stabilizing the victim, of impeding her movement. The couple took it in stride though, and braced themselves with both hands against the jerking and jostling of the train as it sped to the next station. They were understandably oblivious to the intentions of their neighbors. But they were unacceptably oblivious of their belongings, their situation, and their vulnerability. We were dying to shout out, to yell pickpocket! It is our deepest urge and instinct to warn others of the danger we’re so aware of. However… however…
We didn’t. For the reasons we have and will further explain, we let the situation take its course. We reminded ourselves: we are researchers in the field, observing and documenting a specific behavior, and we use the knowledge we gain to educate many. Once again and with twinges of guilt, we refrained from interfering.
Athens contrast
Athens’ green line is notorious for pickpockets. This convenient route is heavily used by tourists from Piraeus at the southern end, where ferries and cruise ships dock, to Thiseio for the Acropolis, Monastiraki for the Plaka shopping district, and Omonia Square, the city center. When these trains are crowded, and they frequently are, they’re pickpocket paradise. Thieves thrive on the forced physical contact, distraction of discomfort, and bodies hiding their dirty work.
Boris and Igor were swiveling their heads with exaggerated nonchalance. The train lurched into darkness for about three seconds. When it emerged, Igor lowered his sunglasses from the top of his head to his eyes. A got-it signal, we reflected later.
Still pretending not to know each other, they shoved impolitely through the standing crowd to position themselves against the doors. They were first to exit the train as the doors slid open, and they separated immediately, walking in opposite directions on the platform. The tourist couple was almost last to get off the train, so we jumped off also and caught up with them. We could see right away that the woman’s bag had been slit with a razor.
Why hadn’t those thug-like thieves sliced my bag? I knew they wanted it. Perhaps they thought the leather too thick, or they weren’t happy with their access or angle. Possibly the knot in my drawstring signaled my awareness of potential danger. Maybe they thought someone could see them, or their getaway would be hindered.
How to avoid pickpockets
Boris and Igor left me for someone else. It’s proof of the tremendous coordination of innumerable aspects required from the perpetrator’s perspective. So many factors must be in alignment before a thief will take a chance; so many conditions must be just right. With such a delicate balance necessary, it is not difficult to throw a monkey wrench into the thief’s equilibrium. Eliminate one or more of the elements he requires, and he’d just as soon move on to an easier target with a higher likelihood of success.
Two Mumbai pickpockets handcuffed together and roped to a cop.
All these Mumbai stories of trains, crowds, swamis, the slum called Dharavi, and promises of more stories… What you’re really wondering is: did the Thiefhunters find any pickpockets in Mumbai?
The Thiefhunters did, and lets not even count the two boys found handcuffed together at Kurla train station, roped to an undercover policeman. We rode the train with them where they had to sit on the floor, like dogs on a leash.
Bob and I spent days on trains so crowded we couldn’t move, and joined pushing-shoving boarding mobs that were a pickpocket heaven. With opportunities like those, we thought we’d find plenty of thieves.
The pickpocket shows his method, which is classic: he uses one hand to raise the wallet from outside the pocket.
We road buses all over the city, which turned out to be a fascinating way to see Mumbai off the tourist track. At stops along the way, we hopped off and onto buses that barely paused for passengers. Where large groups waited to board, the rush was sudden and desperate—perfect for pickpockets. They should be able to do their work without boarding at all, putting instant miles between themselves and their victims. At a bus stop on the edge of a large slum, we spotted a pair that did board. The ticket-taker noticed them too, and pushed them off at the next stop.
Interestingly, every bus we rode carried a human ticket man who checked and sold tickets. Whereas on trains, we saw no controls whatsoever.
At end-of-the-line bus stations, huge orderly crowds lined up in a metal cattle mill for each route. Buses came at short intervals, again barely stopping. Passengers surged on while a uniformed people-manager tried to keep order. These men too watched for pickpockets, and told us that most thieves stalked bus passengers on the two monthly paydays. Those are only the pickpockets who get caught, I say.
He’s got the wallet. Look at those thumbnails—polished by the inside of many pockets?
From the excellent, new, non-fiction book I just read, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, I gather that beating is a common enterprise in Mumbai. Among the book’s stressed-out, almost-zero-income community members, everyone partakes: parents beat children, brothers beat sisters, and kids beat each other up regularly. In the book, police are notoriously brutal. When we interviewed Mumbai pickpocket Rahul some years ago, he’d been beaten to a pulp by train passengers who’d caught him in the act. This, we are told over and over, is the way it works in Mumbai. A deterrent, possibly.
And when our friend Paul McFarland was mugged for his wallet, the wallet, his ID, and credit cards were all returned some 15 minutes later, with only the cash missing. Why? Karma.
The pickpocket we spoke with this visit was from Andhra Pradesh, an Indian state southeast of Maharashtra (where Mumbai is). He specializes in highway robberies, getting a driver to pull over whereupon he steals their stuff. But the smooth pickpocket moves he showed us betrayed his real job skills.
We promised not to photograph his face, but I will say this: although he was of average height, weight, and appearance, he was the type who would stand out in a crowd as suspicious. Perhaps it was his demeanor.
The pickpocket raises his leg and presses his knee into his victim’s leg.
Our translator spoke English and Marathi. Our barefoot pickpocket spoke something else, so our conversation was rough. The routine problem and frustration with impromptu interviews with thieves—not everyone is willing to get involved with criminals.
The thief described himself as a married Muslim with a wife and five children living in the next-door state. In the time-honored tradition, he learned pickpocketing from his father. When he demonstrated his technique, he couldn’t help using a specific move with his leg, in which he raised it to press his knee into the back of his victim’s leg. One indicator common to career pickpockets that we notice over and over is that their particular style is engrained and they can’t change it, even for a demonstration. His fluid motions and the confidence with which he showed them telegraphed that he was very practiced. We couldn’t figure out whether he currently practices both pickpocketing and highway robbery, or if he’d shifted from one to the other.
Bob and I have spent a lot of time thiefhunting in Mumbai, and our conclusion remains: although pickpocketing is not unheard of, a visitor is not very likely to be a victim. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t practice safe-stowing and down-dressing—but I assume that readers of this blog already know that.
The train to the slum wasn’t crowded, due to the hour and our direction of travel. Although there were plenty of seats, the swami made a beeline for us and planted himself next to Bob so that we sat three-in-a-row.
Our first impressions: he’s smiley, charming, has near-perfect English and a headband. Why were we the subject of his intense curiosity? He started asking questions, and when we asked him questions, his answers were very long. He’s a conman, we thought. Let’s see what his game is.
Our second impressions: He’s wearing at least five shirts and a heavy jacket (it’s 90°). His headband is actually hospital gauze and it’s stained yellow in back. He’s carrying belongings in a Kellogg’s cereal box. Is he a madman or a nutcase? Delusional, or suffering a concussion? Has he just had an accident or an operation? I can see a bit of shaved head above the gauze.
“I can guess your age plus minus one year,” he announced. Aha—he’s a circus performer! Or is this just one of the functions swamis perform? He was a little short on Bob’s age, but Bob said he’d have been right if it weren’t for the haircolor. I can’t guess the swami’s age at all.
As more and more men gathered around our conversation, I tried to catch an eye; none gave me a smile or an ironic grin.
Observing this eccentric conversation, a solemn audience formed around us. What do the ordinary Indians recognize that we do not? Is he a well-known character? Infamous? Is he sending out some cultural signals we’re just not getting? No one smiled. No one winked.
“Where do you alight?” Mahim Junction, we said. He is traveling to the end of the line. We have four or five more stops together.
Confident and commanding with a sweetness about him; we are confounded as to his motives.
He leaned in to us though he was already thigh-to-thigh, with endless important things to tell us. Most urgent was that he is our host in India, and next time we visit we need only phone his mobile on arrival and we will be his guests. He’s the founder and CEO of a huge, multinational entertainment company, makes documentary films, he said, and owns seven bungalows in Goa. We have to visit him in Goa. We have to stay with him there.
“How often are you in Goa?” Bob asked.
“Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Mondays I am back in Mumbai.”
I raised my camera with a questioning face.
“Wait, wait, wait, your light is not sufficient!” the swami scolded. Maybe he is a filmmaker.
He insisted on giving us his contact information and demanded paper from Bob. Bob unfolded a page from his pocket and began to tear off a corner.
The swami writes out his contact information, covering both sides of the sheet of paper in small cursive.
“No! Don’t tear it. Give it to me!” The swami grabbed it, smoothed it onto his Kellogg’s box, and began writing in cursive with his own pencil. He was quiet and concentrated for long stretches. Each time he raised his head to speak, Bob reached for the paper, presuming he was finished writing. Bob’s paper had important notes for the day on it.
“I’m not finished!” the swami whined, and bent over the paper each time. He’d already completely filled the front and back, his handwriting becoming smaller and filling corners.
Dharavi slum, as seen from a speeding train.
The train approached Mahim Junction along the perimeter of the slum Dharavi, our destination. I filmed the edge of the slum from the speeding train window: slow-moving people and colorful, skewed huts among a of confetti of beaten trash. Bob reached for his notepaper once more.
“I’m not finished. Do you want incomplete things or full things? Don’t worry, I am getting down with you at Mahim Station. I am busy, but I have ample time for a visitor. I want you to be comfortable in India!” He finished with a beatific smile.
The swami writes.
The swami followed us off the train, clearly intending to stick with us (or manipulate us somehow?). Suddenly, he was leading us. Attempting a graceful separation and needing that piece of paper, we trailed him to a bench on the platform where he sat down. He began reading aloud every word he’d written on the paper, front and back. A new audience encircled us, men who were not ashamed to show their interest, leaning in and cocking their heads to read the notes. The swami read on, unaffected. He read his name, his long important titles, his Mumbai address and phone numbers, his Goa home address, his office address, his mobile phone, and several email addresses. His Facebook address, and a description of his Facebook profile picture (a white lion). And still he was not ready to let us go.
Bob took the paper and thanked the swami, who rose from the bench as we backed away. Politely but forcefully, we extricated ourselves. We meant to phone some of the numbers the following day but we didn’t. We’re not sure, but we’re pegging him a harmless nutcase. And if not the CEO of a multinational entertainment company, at least an entertainment himself.
UPDATE 5/7/12: The swami does have a facebook page with the white lion profile pic he wrote of. All that’s on it though is a photo of him with a woman and two young boys. I could easily jump to the conclusion that they are his family. “About” himself, he says “I AM A HUMAN BEAGIN & SPEAK LANGAUGE OPF HUMANITY.” He’s in an “open relationship” and “interested in men and women,” but I can imagine him interpreting these labels in the broadest, loosest terms. But who am I to say? Probably, he’s the CEO of a multinational entertainment company.—B
We bought second-class train tickets (for our thiefhunting) and rode the most crowded Mumbai trains ever. No—you can’t imagine how crowded. Speeding into the stations, people jump off before the trains even slow down. But more amazingly, they leap on, right through the mobs waiting at the doors, before the trains stop.
I panicked the first time I experienced this, standing among the masses at the open door ready to get off. Like salmon swimming upstream, men lept on—like iron filings attracted to a magnet, against gravity. And once the train stopped, it was too late. Everyone else had hopped off and I was buffeted and spun in the doorway by men desperate to board. Only uncharacteristic aggression got me off before the train pulled out again.
Mumbai trains are mind-blowing
The behavior of Mumbai train commuters is a consequence of the efficient trains which stop very briefly at the stations; huge, huge mobs pack the platforms, and the men hope to get a seat for their long commutes. The benches in second class hold three men each, but four squeeze onto each. They alternate leaning back. Two more commuters stand between facing benches among the many knees. Everyone seems to permit and accept the squeezing. There is no “personal space.”
I’ve spoken only of men because most women and children ride in the ladies’ cars. In fact, I didn’t see a single other woman in the many second-class cars I rode all week. I was told though that the women are also aggressive about boarding during peak commute times. They can’t match the men, I’m sure.
Dadar Station is one of Mumbai’s busiest, but as it’s totally off the tourist track, you will likely never experience the huge madhouse that it is. Crossing over the rickety pedestrian “flyway” over the tracks and platform, we happened to see the awful scrum of getting-on-versus-getting-off from directly above. We were awestruck, and stayed to film the next train. Have a look:
We meandered through the enormous flower market in the streets and underpasses around Dadar Station. It was evening commute time when we were ready to go back to our hotel in Colaba. Bob and I stood on the platform in the middle of the pushing-fighting-desperate-madness. Bob filmed the scene while being knocked around like a punching bag. In the relative calm between two Mumbai trains a man next to us found the shoes he’d been pushed out of. “I can’t do this,” I said as we let a couple more trains come and go. Bob said “come on,” and grabbed my hand. Then we were in the middle, trying to board through a flood of debarking passengers, then pushed from behind with nowhere to go in front and the train about to move whether people were on, half on, hanging on, or whatever.
Atul and Smriti Shah experienced it first-hand. “It happened during the night,” they concluded. “The entire compartment was sprayed with some sort of gas that knocked us out. Then our suitcase was slowly extracted from under our seat, the lock twisted loose and, with all the time in the world, the suitcase was looted.”
Atul and Smriti live with their small daughters in Mumbai, India, where railway is the customary way to crisscross the country. For the occasion of a relative’s marriage, the family traveled to the town of Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh. As tradition dictates, they brought along their finest clothes and jewelry to wear to the many matrimonial celebrations and ceremonies. As a high-caste woman from a wealthy family, now married to a successful businessman, Smriti carried an enviable display of gold and diamonds.
“She had diamonds on her fingers and in her nose and ears,” Atul explained with pride, “and gold bangles and necklaces. Also, she wore the good-luck vermilion mark on her forehead that Indians always wear when traveling away from home.”
After the wedding and family visits, the Shahs boarded the train for the twenty-hour journey home. They had one suitcase, but it was a large one: fifty kilos, Atul estimated. It contained all the family’s finery, including Smriti’s jewelry, and had a small padlock on the zipper tabs. Atul forced the suitcase under Smriti’s seat in the train compartment, where it was tightly lodged. They did not open the suitcase for the duration of the journey.
The Shahs boarded in the evening, had a meal packed by Smriti’s mother, and settled down for the night.
“The strange thing is that none of us woke up during the night,” Smriti told me. “Even the children slept the night through, and they never do.”
She remembers a vague sensation of bitterness in her mouth during the night, then the desire for water. But she remembers too the lethargy she felt, the heaviness of her limbs.
Food- and drink-drugging has long been a problem on trains, but could knockout gas really be in a thief’s arsenal? In my early research, doctors had doubted the likelihood of a thief acquiring the right gas and the victims not waking from the smell. I went back to the doctors and this time they all agreed it could happen. Chloroform is often used in primitive surgical conditions and has no smell at all, some said. An anesthesiologist mentioned Halothane, which would be readily available from any surgical facility or veterinarian. Halothane has a slight odor but not enough to wake an already-sleeping person.
“Within twenty or thirty minutes,” Dr. Jared Kniffen told me, “someone could be in a deep enough sleep so that you could enter the room without his awareness. The danger of this is you could kill someone if too much were used. There’s a second possibility—a gas called Cevoflurane. It’s odorless, but much more difficult to obtain.”
But wouldn’t the robber himself be knocked out? I asked.
“There are ways to avoid that,” Dr. Kniffen said. “A certain travel supply house sells a smoke hood that gives twenty minutes of oxygen.” It’s meant for use in escaping from a burning building, but a clever thief might employ one for another use.
It sounds too sophisticated to me, too troublesome and risky. But if the reward were a treasure chest like Smriti Shah’s, it must be worth one thousand times the risk of simply snagging a laptop from a business traveler.
Despite the Shahs’ conviction, gassing on an overnight train is only a remote risk; my paranoid apprehension on our journey to Prague was out of proportion. Breaking into and stealing from compartments is a real risk though, and so is food- and drink-drugging. Nembitol, scopolamine, and benzodiazepine are the drugs most commonly slipped into food or drink, but only after the thief builds trust and confidence with the mark.
Overnight train travel requires watchfulness. Stations can be seedy. They’re open and available to anyone, with or without tickets. They attract a varied population of travelers and non-travelers alike. Vigilance is vital.
Stations with the biggest theft problems are those that are connected to, or nearby, bus or subway stations, which are often hangouts for gangs, drug dealers, and other undesirables. Thieves are able to loiter unchallenged within the stations, without attracting attention. Then they can take advantage of congestion for cover and easy escape.
Train stations and daytime journeys are covered in Chapter Six [of my book, Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams]. Here, I’ll discuss overnight trips. Certainly not all overnight trains carry such risks as the following, which are surely worst cases. They’re a popular and logical mode of travel, not to be dismissed. If you plan well, you make the most of your vacation days, see a bit of countryside, meet some other interesting travelers, and save the expense of a hotel night.
My Swedish friends called me “exotic” because I had never been on an overnight train. It’s easy to find a European who has never been on an airplane, they told me, but everyone’s been on an overnight train. So when Bob and I found ourselves in Venice, Italy, ready to visit Prague in the Czech Republic, we decided to go by rail, overnight.
We boarded in late evening, and it seemed we would encounter our first train scam immediately. A large, slobbish, dreary man blocked the aisle and demanded our tickets.
“Tickets!”
He wore baggy black pants and a soggy white shirt. Nothing official, no monogram, badge, cap, embroidery, name tag, nothing to identify him. Yet, as his bulk impeded our path, we had no choice but to give him our tickets. He pointed to our reserved compartment. Thankfully, he didn’t demand money. But he didn’t return our tickets, either.
We could have been assigned to an Italian-owned wagon, or an Austrian one, possibly even a Swiss one. But we got a wagon owned and maintained by the Czech Railroad. We entered our dismal compartment and tallied up the security risks.
First though, what happened to our tickets? Bob went to find the big sour slob who had confiscated them. I could just imagine the moment a uniformed conductor would come to punch our tickets.
“But… but… we’ve already given them to the conductor!” we’d say.
“What conductor?”
“The man in black pants!”
“No tickets, no travel! Get off the train!”
Bob and the Czech ticket-taker argued in mutually exclusive languages. Bob returned without the tickets. We had nothing, not even a receipt. My turn. I tried another way. I found a Czech lady who explained: the man is our “attendant.” He keeps the tickets to show officials at border crossings. He’ll wake us in the morning, and will return the tickets then.
Okay.
Back in our dusty quarters we assessed the realistic hazards and dismissed the rest. We would not, for example, worry about knock-out gas being snuck under our door as a precursor to robbery. Bob said we wouldn’t worry about it. I merely insisted we keep the window open. Where, then, shall we put our luggage? Under the window is the obvious place, but not if we leave it open. The only other possibility would block the door.
Block the door.
We had not brought anything suitable to secure the door, but its flimsy chain would be enough. Bob said so.
I couldn’t sleep.
The gentle rocking I had imagined would seduce me to slumber was instead a rude awakening. It was jerky and ruthless, like being aroused by an earthquake. If I slept, I could be rolled like a drunk and never parse the violence of the assault from the brutality of the jolting train.
The noise from the open window was deafening. The rhythmic, metallic percussion of the tracks combined with a menagerie of whistles, screeches, and shrieks when we stopped at stations and borders. It was torment, but I wouldn’t shut the window.
Just a few days before, we had interviewed a railway police officer in Milan whose detail was theft. He claimed that most, if not all, the “gassing” tales are made up by victims too embarrassed to admit that they had slept through their own robberies. I had read an interview of a young Czech train thief who described exactly how he enters a compartment, watches his sleeping victim, slices open the victim’s pocket, and lets the wallet drop into his hand. Without gas or drugs. That sounded unbelievable to me; impossible. Surely the victim would awaken? But having experienced the dreadful noise and ceaseless motion of an unair-conditioned overnight train, I realize how horribly possible it is.
Railway mafia groups fight over territory along the thousands of kilometers of track across Central & Eastern Europe. The most lucrative connections are those between major cities which are most frequented by foreign tourists who are filthy rich, naive, gullible, and can afford to shed some of their wealth, in the eyes of the criminals who specialize in robbing sleeping victims.
…˜The mafia groups fight amongst themselves for territory and they use sleeping gas to subdue their victims,’ said the sheriff of a Polish railway station on the Polish-Czech border with over 30 years experience in his job who requested that his name be withheld. …˜They are very skilled and use the ventilation system to gas their victims or quietly inject the fast-acting gas into their cabins through a slightly opened door.’
Foreign tourists are followed and carefully watched. There is no easier place to rob them than in a train which they essentially control on some tracks way out in nowhere. They attack you when you are asleep, that’s their style and that’s their specialty.
—Central & East European CrimiScope
www.ceeds.com/cee-crimiscope [defunct]
THAT READ, we traveled exceptionally lightly for our week-long research trip to Prague. One change of clothes, computers and camera equipment, money, passports, and plastic watches each.
We boarded the Venice-to-Prague overnight train at 8 p.m. on a Saturday. After being forced to surrender our tickets to an unidentified man (who we eventually learned was our “attendant”), we were shown to a gritty compartment. Dust clumps the size of rats swirled around the floor. Sad brown floral curtains of a coarse material hung above mismatched cushions and general grime. The bunks had been opened and made up for sleeping, with bed linen that seemed fresh and clean enough. But it was stifling hot in the un-air-conditioned train, and the stale air was of suffocating stillness.
There was no choice in the sweat-smelly and sweltering compartment but to leave the window open for air, despite the deafening, rackety-clackety clamor which made sleep all but impossible. In the dark hubbub, aromas told a tactless tale. The smell of sweet wood smoke rushed in, then fresh-cut hay, and later cow manure. At every stop the train’s brakes sliced the rhythmic clatter with ear-piercing shrieks. I clamped my palms to my overly-sensitive ears in agony.
Then, stationary in a depot or switching yard, sometimes for half an hour or more, I worried about that open window. Could someone reach in and grab a bag? Voices shouted, neighboring trains clanged and clattered: but even in the relative quiet, I was afraid to drop off to sleep. And without the circulation of air, our somber cell quickly grew hot and sour-smelling.
We had read so much about East European train robbers I was, frankly, petrified.
Bolt your door from the inside, I read.
One common, square-hole key opens all compartment doors, I read somewhere else.
Bring wire with which to secure your door, and tie down your belongings.
Sleep on top of your bags.
Don’t sleep!
What scared me most were the tales of the gassers, who knock you out in the dead of night by fumigating your compartment from under the door. Then they break in and help themselves to your belongings. My doctor friend Ann had said there was no gas she knew of that wouldn’t wake you up with its smell, or make you gag or throw up, or kill you. Was that supposed to be comforting?
I was primed for panic when aroused from a light and fitful nap by the quiet rattling of our door. I heard a key jiggle in the lock and the bolt was thrown. The door was yanked open an inch and stopped by the safety chain, which held. A flashlight shined at me through the crack and several male voices mumbled quietly.
Not very sneaky, I thought. But maybe they have knives! They couldn’t have expected as light a sleeper as I. Or—I sniffed the air—maybe they’ve gassed us, not expecting an open window to dilute the chemical.
“Passports,” Bob murmured from the bunk below me—not the night-train-novice I was. We were at the Austrian border.
Thus experienced, I was prepared for the repeat performance several hours later at the Czech border. We were not well-rested when we arrived at Prague at 9:00 in the morning.
