Well-dressed and decent-looking, these lifters disappear into the crowd before anything can be done. Very rarely, the police admit, has a bag-lifter been arrested or a bag-lifting gang busted.

The modus operandi: These lifters prefer luxury and semi-luxury ST buses, which are generally less crowded and are parked at the stand. They get into the bus, confidently pick up a bag left on some seat by a passenger who has disembarked after `booking' a seat with his luggage, and walk off.

The bag lifted is usually light and trendy-looking. Brief-cases and handbags are favourites as either cash or valuables are kept in these and they are easier to carry.

According to an eyewitness account of a fellow journalist who was about to board a Surat-Amreli ST bus from the station, a youngster who would be barely into his teens walked into the Surat-Gariyadhar (Saurashtra) semi-luxury ST bus. Well-dressed, fair, and speaking fluent Hindi, he inquired of the ST bus conductor when the bus would leave and other details. He then casually picked up a Samsonite suitcase kept on an empty seat and walked off. It was only after five minutes that the real owner of the bag came and raised an alarm.

As usual, the policemen on duty caught hold of a shabby-looking youth and began manhandling him. It was only after the colleague told the police that he had seen the bag-lifter taking the suitcase that a search based on his description began. By then, it was too late.

Says the PSO of the Mahidharpura police station, under which the bus stand falls, ``How can people be so careless as to leave their bags behind?'' Admitting that detection was low, he said that by the time people raised an alarm, the thief was far beyond the reach of the police. And moreover, it was not practical to stop every person carrying a bag to inquire wether it was his own or stolen.

The police have opened a police chowky on the bus stand premises specifically to check bag lifting, and put a PSI in charge, but this has not served its purpose with bag-lifting occurring almost on a daily basis.

In fact, the menace has become so severe that even bus drivers and conductors said that they have begun to take special care of their baggage after a couple of instances when their luggage, too, was stolen.