Chocolates worth Rs 17L stolen from Lucknow godown
Darpan News Desk IANS, 17 Aug, 2022 11:41 AM
Lucknow, Aug 17 (IANS) In a seemingly bizarre incident, nearly 150 cartons of chocolate bars of a popular brand have been stolen from a godown by unidentified miscreants in the Chinhat area in Lucknow.
The godown belongs to businessman Rajendra Singh Siddhu, who is a distributor of a multinational chocolate brand in the city.
Siddhu told police that at least 150 cartons having chocolates worth Rs 17 lakh were stolen along with some boxes of biscuits.
In his FIR lodged with the police, Sidhu said that he recently shifted from his old house in Chinhat to an apartment in Vibhuti Khand in Gomti Nagar.
He said that he was using the old house as a godown for storing chocolates meant for distribution.
On Tuesday, he got a call from a neighbour in Chinhat who informed him that the door of his house was lying broken.
When he reached the house, he found that the entire godown was empty. The thieves had also taken away the digital video recorder of CCTVs.
"Another neighbour informed me that he heard a pick-up truck in the night and thought that I had come to take away some stock. It seems this truck was used by the miscreants to ferry the stolen stock," Siddhu told police.
He said that the stock had arrived a couple of days ago and was meant to be distributed to the retailers in the city.
Additional deputy commissioner of police, east zone, Syed Abbas Ali said that footage of CCTV cameras installed in other parts of the localities are being scanned for clues.
While briefing the officers, the DGP said the topmost priority of the government, as directed by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, is to further strengthen the fight against drugs to make Punjab a drug-free state, besides eliminating the gangster culture, maintaining law and order, and detection of crime.
Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur announced Rs 5 lakh to the next of the kin of the deceased, whereas Rs 15,000 as immediate relief for the injured. He said free treatment would be provided to the injured.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Monday carried out his first Cabinet expansion by inducting five legislators, including second-time MLA Aman Arora, into his council of ministers. The expansion came in less than four months of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) sweeping to victory in the Assembly elections by winning 92 seats of the 117 seats.
The police have so far managed to nab four of the accused, including one woman, who have been identified as Gurjant Singh (31), Navjot Singh (30), Satpal Singh (28) and Gurpreet Kaur (30).
The ambidextrous sharpshooter, identified as Ankit alias Chhota, a resident of Sonipat in Haryana, was most desperate to commit the crime."He fired simultaneously from two pistols in his two hands," H.G.S. Dhaliwal, Special Commissioner (Special Cell), said during a media briefing.
With this the two-and-half year old, three-party Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress government experiment has collapsed, barely hours after Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari ordered a floor test late on Tuesday night.