India’s Jharkhand villagers turn creative to keep thieves at bay
Thefts have already been committed in this house. Try your luck elsewhere, says a poster
Patna: Villagers in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand have been putting up interesting posters outside their homes to save them from pilferage, irked at the frequent incidents of theft. In some cases, the same house was targeted twice in a month.
The peculiar posters have come up in Bhagwati Nagar locality of Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand state, leaving the passersby amused and the police highly embarrassed.
Through posters, the aggrieved residents are advising the thieves to try their luck elsewhere since their homes have already been robbed off and they will get no valuables as such if they make fresh attempts there.
“Thefts have already been committed in this house, so it is useless to try again. Please don’t waste your time; try your luck elsewhere,” read the posters which were found pasted on the entrance of most of the buildings in the locality.
Villagers said they were compelled to take this step as the police were doing just nothing to put a check on criminal incidents which have robbed off their peace. Quite many homes were robbed twice at short intervals, they said.
On Saturday night, as many as eight houses were targeted in the locality. “My house was robbed twice in a month,” said Sanjeev Khanna, a banker. According to him, he had gone to his in-laws’ house when the thieves robbed his home. Khanna returned after being informed by his neighbours about the incident.
Similarly thieves stole valuables from the house of another villager as well as his tenant. Both were away. According to villagers more than a dozen homes have been targeted in the past one week.
The state reported a total of 2,384 incidents of theft in the first three months of the current year, according to a report prepared by the Jharkhand police.