Residents of HA Block are on their toes for the last one month. As many as four break-ins have been reported. Though not much has been stolen, the back-to-back incidents have triggered alarmed discussions in the block WhatsApp group.
Last Friday, four laptops were stolen from HA 225. The recovery was made within 24 hours by the detective department of the Bidhannagar Commissionerate. “The person was wanted in several cases of theft. The laptops could be recovered as he did not get a chance to sell them off in such a short time,” said a senior police officer.
The same lane has been targeted twice before. Subhasis Misra of HA 205 had left for his Midnapore home after casting his vote in Salt Lake on June 1. He came back the next night to find the locks on the grille gate and the main door of the single storeyed house broken. The door was shut from inside. “I thought the thieves were still there and alerted the police station and some neighbours. The back door was left ajar and everything in my office had been turned over. Surprisingly, they had not taken my desktop computer or my TV set. Only some cash and an old mobile phone were gone,” said Misra.
He believes the malfunctioning streetlights were a major reason for criminals to be targeting the block. “The police could find nothing from the CCTV footage from the adjacent house, it was so dark outside,” he said.
Another house that was broken into was HA 238. “But even there not much was taken,” said a police officer.
In the adjacent lane, a building that stays locked since the death of the owner at HA 189 also was targeted. “Here the security guard who sleeps in the garage was robbed of a bag. It was recovered the next morning on the premises of a building at the back,” secretary of HA Block Residents’ Forum Santanu Basu said.
The arrest of a thief last week is not giving complete relief to the residents as they are unsure if a single individual is behind the series of break-ins. “Today itself, a stranger had sneaked into HA 43. When he was confronted by the residents, he claimed he was looking for a lady, mentioning a random name,” Basu told The Telegraph Salt Lake on Wednesday.