There are times when among all the tragic news, we come across one which is so bizarre that we have to do a double take just to believe that it actually happened. With crime rates so high in the country, it is not unusual to come across a few weird ones but this ritual of robbers who chose their target based on an odd specification will make you go, “Hein?”
Navghar Police recently arrested four members of a gang of robbers who had a strange ritual of spinning a coconut at the road junction and rob a house towards which the fruit pointed.
As reported by Midday, the police said that the robbers even performed a puja on the road junction complete with vermillion and flowers.
Navghar police inspector Pratap Bhosle talked about how the members of the gang were nabbed and said,
“We received a tip-off about them when they were approaching the check naka, most likely to do their routine and find a new area to commit crime in. My team laid a trap and got ready for these men at the spot before they reached. Four were arrested.”
A number of tools including four knives, two katawanis, two screwdrivers, one spring panha, four keys, two caps, and a coconut with flowers have been seized from them. According to the police, there are several cases registered against the gang at Navghar, Mulund, Thane, Dombivli, Kalyan, Navi Mumbai and several other places.
Talking about how the police knew that the same gang was behind so many robberies, Akhilesh Singh, Deputy Commissioner of Police said,
“In their last house break-in, they’d robbed Rs 1.6 lakh. The house had been shut for many days; we found fresh flowers at the spot, and that matched with several crimes in other areas.”
While we do feel sorry for the people who lost so much money because of the crime, it’s rather amusing that the gang had such an elaborate ritual. Clearly, God wasn’t with them.