The police caught Anup Kumar Ghosh (30) from City Centre this morning and seized 17 cellphones with chargers, 24 hand bags and several ID cards and credit cards of women from his possession. He will be produced at the Bidhannagar Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court on Sunday.

He worked as a car driver during the day and a snatcher during the night. After being spurned in love, he lived this dual life for nearly two years before being arrested. A resident of Baduria in North 24 Parganas, Ghosh was a hired driver of the PWD department. He had been living at a rented house in Dum Dum for the last six months.

North 24 Parganas SP Supratim Sarkar said that on

December 20 last year, a bag of Kalpana Dutta, a HSBC’s employee, was snatched in Karunamoyee.

“After tracing calls from her cellphone, we found that Ghosh was using it. We managed to trace his friends and laid a trap to bring Ghosh at City Centre today, where we arrested him,” Sarkar said.

During interrogation, the police also came to know that in 2006, Ghosh had developed a relationship with a woman at Ultadanga. However, the relation did not last long. “Since then, Ghosh developed a mentality to take revenge on women in general. From July 2006, he started committing the crimes. He was a one-man gang,” Sarkar said.

“Ghosh targeted women on the road. He would cross the woman and park his car at some distance. As the woman came closer, Ghosh would focus the headlights of his car on her face, snatch her bag and escape,” the SP said.

The police said, in the past two years, he had committed over 30 such crimes. Most of the women who fell prey to Ghosh were in the age group of 25 and 35 years. They were residents of Barasat, Madhyamgram and Jessore Road.