Robbery @ my house in HSR Layout...

This happened sometime back in our rented house in Bangalore, where I even stay currently. My sister and her husband are now based out of UK, but way back in 2007 we used to stay together in this house here.

It was 7a.m., Monday morning when we opened the main gate, just as we usually did every other day. Minutes after we opened the gate, my sister realized that her hand purse went missing from the main room, the place where she kept it the evening before. Sunday was full of fun, wherein we visited couple of places in Bangalore and came home late in the evening. My sister kept her hand purse in our main living room, which is also the entrance room. It was gone in the morning. Someone came in the house just after 7a.m., while we were all in the house, and took the bag quietly. Hundreds of pounds, along with lot of gold which included their wedding rings were all gone. Total damage of about Rs.90000. We were supposed to keep all the stuff in the bank the very next day, but it seems the timing went really wrong…...of course not for the thief!

We had only one suspect. It was Stalin, the guy who used to come to our house to wash Balaji’s car. Balaji and his family used to stay on the first floor in the same house. We began looking out for Stalin in HSR, but all went in vain for about a week. He went absconding from that day onwards, and didn’t even turn up to clean Balaji’s vehicle. Finally, it was almost after 7-8 days when I spotted him working in a nearby house. Stalin was a slim guy, and I knew I could handle him given to understand my physique as compared to him at least. But, this was Bangalore and not Delhi, where one first would have given him a beating and then would have questioned about the incident. I had to restrain from doing that, taking care of any issue I could end up in here. So, I called up my brother in law, and both of us brought Stalin to our house for further enquires. The policeman, with whom we were in touch, was on the way to our house already. He arrived and took the guy to police station. The guy was given a good bashing there but still didn’t utter a single word about the theft. Later in the evening we got a call from the police about the status, and that they would further probe. We somehow did not want this to continue further, so went to the police station and brought him back, just to get a call from an unknown lawyer next day to withdraw our police complain failing which we were threatened about legal action. That was the extent up to which we suffered. Fortunately, we had some relatives as senior advocates who suggested us to not to withdraw/give anything in writing to the police, as we had till that date not given any written complaint. Giving a complain withdrawal even without filing a complaint would have ended us into a big trap!

This was the ordeal through which we went. Certainly a costly lesson for us!