Mumbai, Aug. 26: The three young women came to steal — they ended up stripping.

As their stunned pursuers halted in their tracks, the three started running again — but this time a policewoman was in the way.

Bharti Patil was returning home around 6 this morning after night shift when one of the thieves literally ran into her arms.

“I caught hold of one of the escaping women and ordered her to wear the clothes she held in her hand. I ordered the crowd not to come near them. Surprised as they were, they agreed,” said Patil, a constable with Dindoshi police station in Goregaon East, recalling the drama right outside the gates of the police residential quarters in Jogeshwari.

“I slapped her and ordered the others to get into their clothes. But in the melee, the other two women escaped without a stitch on.”

Patil then called on her police wireless and soon the woman was taken to Meghwadi police station.

Senior inspector Jaspal Singh Ragi said four women had last evening gone begging in Konkan Nagar. “Seeing the door of a house open, they picked up four mobile phones.”

This morning, three of them returned to the same area, this time carrying an infant and a six-year-old boy in tow.

A resident recognised them and alerted others. Chased by an angry mob of about 200, the three — between 25 and 33 — took off all their clothes and tried to escape.

But the six-year-old couldn’t keep pace with his mother and the crowd got him.

The mother hesitated for a moment, then she picked up a stone and banged it on her head repeatedly to scare the mob. Then Patil appeared on the scene.

At Meghwadi police station, the woman again started taking off her clothes. Fearing complications, the police let her go.

“Yes, such a woman was brought to us,” Ragi said. “But since she seemed mentally unstable, we let her go with her child.”