Police suspect a group of three who were involved in robbing a kids’ store at Mani Square to be the same one that stole a customer’s wallet in a South City departmental store last month.

In both thefts, the group — two men and a woman — was wearing masks and at least in one of the stores the men were wearing caps.

Some cops feel the three are foreigners and used the same modus operandi — of allegedly stealing while pretending to see Indian currency notes — in both shopping mall thefts that happened in the last week of November.

Photographs of the three suspects have been obtained from CCTV footage from the malls and circulated across all city police stations.

At Mani Square, the trio had entered a kids’ store and two of them had introduced themselves as a couple, the police said. The third had gone to the cash counter and started talking to the staff, asking about Indian currency notes.

“He had claimed he didn’t know much about Indian currency notes. On a pretext of checking a few notes, he accessed the cash box and started fiddling with the notes. He had then started a conversation about Mahatma Gandhi seeing his picture on the notes,” said an investigating officer.

Before the staff realised anything, the “couple”, followed by their friend, allegedly started walking out of the store without buying anything. A few minutes later the staff found Rs 40,000 missing from the cash box, the police said.

A case has been started with the Phoolbagan police station.

A similar operation was carried out to rob a woman at South City Mall a day later, the cops said.

A group of three — two men and a woman — had started a conversation with the shopper in a departmental store and coaxed her into showing them Indian currency notes. A little later, the woman had reported to the store that her wallet containing Rs 14,000 had disappeared.

A theft case has been reported with Jadavpur police station.

“In both the cases, they pretended to have no knowledge about Indian currency and wanted to see the notes that bore Mahatma Gandhi’s pictures,” said an officer in Lalbazar.

Senior officers said the three appeared to be of foreign origin. A search for the group has been launched. The police are yet to find any digital imprint left by them because they did not buy anything, sources said.