Record high prices of onions are now spurring thieves to target vegetable markets. Two young men were arrested early on Tuesday for stealing 280 kg of onions worth around Rs 28,000 from Vashi’s Mafco Market at the weekend.According to the APMC police, Deva Majumdar (20) and Salim Shaikh (19) carried out the ‘onion heist’ after studying the movement of vegetable stocks in the market for three days.They zeroed in on a 43-year-old wholesaler, Mukund Doke, who had left behind five sacks of the bulb in his stall. On Sunday night, they broke the locks and carted away the sacks.The two, however, were arrested on Tuesday after the police received a tip about the place where they had hidden the onions. A trap was laid at the place, a closed cold storage unit, and they were caught trying to take the onion sacks away from there, an officer at the APMC police station said.Onion prices have hit a record Rs 90 per kg in the past week, and could touch the Rs 100-mark if the supply doesn’t improve. “The two men told us that they decided to steal onions after learning that their rates had gone up sharply,” the officer said.Assistant Sub-Inspector D Chavan, who is part of the APMC police’s detection squad, said there had been reports of small batches of onions disappearing from Mafco Market, but dealers didn’t approach cops as they didn’t want get caught up in police procedures.“In this case, the quantity of the stock was huge, so the wholesaler filed acomplaint,” he said.The wholesaler initially thought it was an insider’s job, but the police learnt from their informers that two men were seen curiously milling around the market at the weekend.Around 3.30 am on Tuesday, the two men, Majumdar and Shaikh, were seen entering the shut cold storage unit. A police team followed them inside and found them lifting some sacks. “The sacks were full of onions,” the unnamed police officer said. “The men revealed during interrogation that they had been keeping a watch on the market and were waiting for a huge stock to arrive.”Majumdar is a native of West Bengal, while Shaikh is a resident of Mankhurd. They had planned to sell the stolen onions in a Nerul vegetable market.Soaring vegetable prices have sparked similar incidents elsewhere in the country. In August, robbers in Rajasthan hijacked a truck transporting 40 tonnes of onions on the Delhi-Jaipur highway. They, however, were later nabbed.