How three crooks were caught

THE CRIME. One moment it was there…and the next, it was GONE! Vanished without a trace! With only the tantalising aromas lingering around the empty picnic basket for the Vidya Vihar boys to guess at what their canteen cook had packed for their lunch. “I’m sure our famous paneer roles were on the menu!” groaned Arjun, sniffing at the empty basket like a blood hound on the scent of a criminal.

The worst tragedy imaginable had befallen the Vidya Vihar Junior hockey team. At the Army Grounds, during the semi-finals of the Cariappa Memorial Hockey Cup, their entire packed lunch had disappeared! A collective moan of despair rose up from the sweaty, exhausted team that had eagerly crowded around their lunch basket inside the school bus. “What a big fuss!!” you may well think, if you had watched the ‘missing lunch drama’ from the sidelines. “Why can’t those silly Vidya Viharians just buy themselves a good lunch from the stalls set up around the stadium for the finals of the Inter-School hockey festival?” you’d wonder.

 But those who had tasted the school’s famous dry lunches, could understand the boys’ anger and disappointment. The sports master, Mr Raghunandan, ensured that the school’s hockey players, athletes and other sports kids, got the best. Children from other schools drooled over the soft, ghee-tinged paneer rolls that the Vidya Viharians gobbled up in between matches. The VV pudina and cucumber sandwiches; the sweet lassis; the potato and peas samosas, were all famous. Arch rivals, St Antony’s swore that if they’d been fed with such good food, they’d win the hockey trophy EVERY year!

Having won their semi-final match against Residency High School, the VV team had a 2-hour break before the finals at 3 pm. Gloomily they trooped out of their bus and headed towards the food stalls. Once there, and with a few good burgers settled in their grumbling stomachs, their spirits lifted. And by 3 pm, were quite geared up for the finals, which turned out to be quite a boring match actually. Their opponents, Rockford National School, didn’t put up too much of a fight and the VV team won the match with ease.

But on the way back to school, the team’s thoughts returned to the mystery of their missing lunch. Raghu Sir had complained to the army captain who was in charge of conducting the tournament. And he promised to as he too thought the matter was quite serious.

THE SUSPECTS.

No 1 on the list of suspects was the St Antony’s hockey team! Having been knocked out of the semi-finals by Rockford, they might have tried to spoil their rivals, Vidya Vihar’s chances of winning. It was also well-known that the St Antony’s packed lunch was quite miserable, so the motivation could have been pure hunger rather than sabotage!
Arjun, with the trophy lying on his lap, suspected EVERYBODY!! “Because, everybody knows about how good our lunches are, that’s why!” he insisted.

Though he never mentioned it, the sports master suspected two boys on their team who’d been prevented from playing the matches by the school principal. Rana and Aakash had been barred from playing as a punishment for skipping their hockey practice.

As the bus meandered through the innumerable traffic jams in the city, more and more ‘suspects’ cropped up, but there was never enough proof to firmly link the ‘crime’ to the ‘criminal’! As the bus chugged past the school gates, many players had dozed off. It had been a long day. And then Raghu sir’s mobile phone rang. Those beside him heard him say, in surprise, “So, you managed to catch the culprits, Captain?” Soon, the news travelled down the rows of the bus…the lunch thieves had been nabbed!

Arjun, who by then was sure that it must have been the St Antony boys, shouted, “They should be beaten up!” Other boys chorused, “Down, down St Antony’s…” and so it went on till Raghu sir finished his conversation with Captain Mehta and switched off his phone.

He raised his hand to silence the angry children and announced, “Boys! The army has solved the mystery!” And before the boys could start shouting, “Down! Down….” again, he continued. “The army grounds are also used by the police to train their sniffer dogs. And it seems that 3 Golden Retriever pups, slipped away from their trainer and sneaked into the Vidya Vihar bus…the smells seemed to have been too tempting.”

“But how did they get caught?” asked Vijay, perplexed. Sir laughed, “All 3 of them are ill and are now at the vet’s clinic. The ‘evidence’ against all 3 of them was the large quantities of foil that they have been vomiting – foil that they had gobbled up along with the paneer rolls!”