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彼女は自転車を盗んでいるところを捕まった。
She was caught about to steal a bike (given, and rather awkward, translation)

I'm wondering how to parse this sentence. Is 自転車を盗んでいるところ really the object of 捕まった. I hope not because I thought 捕まる was intransitive. Or is this the mysterious ところを, and the を has got nothing to do with the following verb?

In the latter case would a more literal translation be "Although (ところを) she was in the middle of stealing a bike, she was caught." I have little experience with this kind of ところを so sentences like this worry me.

user3856370
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    Related? [Differing explanations of 〜ところを](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/54530/43676) – aguijonazo Jul 31 '21 at 16:36
  • @aguijonazo I saw that link, but I got more confused. There's a lot of talk about indirect/suffering passive, but I didn't think that could apply here because, even though the sentence is translated as passive in English 捕まった itself isn't in the passive voice. – user3856370 Jul 31 '21 at 17:51
  • How about this? [ところを 見つかる, this was in a highly reputable dictionary](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/23404/43676) 見つかる is not passive in form, either. – aguijonazo Aug 01 '21 at 07:00
  • @aguijonazo Thanks for the new link; I hadn't seen that one. So, can I conclude that this is indeed the indirect passive, and that's why it uses を? If so, I guess we can close this as a duplicate. – user3856370 Aug 01 '21 at 07:45
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    I think so. 捕まる is similar in meaning to the passive form of 捕まえる. – aguijonazo Aug 01 '21 at 14:33

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