Off the record

Sweets go missing

Besides unmitigated joy, bonding and revelry, the festive season is also marked by a steep rise in the crime rate all over Bangalore. The city police are usually busy preventing burglaries, minor thefts, murders and accidents. In fact, so busy that they often forget to guard their own possession leaving them the most vulnerable to criminal activities.
This Dasara was no different for the city’s traffic police as no less than the
office of the Inspector General of Police (Traffic) came under the radar of people with a
notorious sweet tooth. So notorious that they smoothly and swiftly made away with
all the sweets and savouries that were meant for distribution among the staff in the office.
One member of the staff was heard complaining about the rapidity and speed
at which this daring act of sweet theft from the guardians occurred.
“I had just bought them and kept it and in a few hours they disappeared. The sweets and savouries were lifted from right under the nose of the deity,” he complained.
Although the police and staff quickly sprung into action, conducting preliminary inquiries into the theft, they failed to establish the identity of the canny perpetrator.
However, highly placed sources in the police — who were at the spot — said that early evidence was against one particular insider with a penchant for sweets and freebies.

Kaushik Chakravarthy, B’lore

The body spray effect

Court orders have most often made news for the right reasons. However, the
Thiruvananthapuram Chief Judicial Magistrate court created quite a sensation
some time ago through its ruling in a sex racket case.
A woman who was arrested in a prostitution case had the shock of her life when the court rejected her plea to return even her body spray recovered from the scene of the offence.
In fact, it would be wrong to say that the woman wanted only her body spray back.
In her plea, the woman had listed her vanity bag, cash of Rs 17,000 and the spray among the articles seized.
The magistrate not only rejected her plea for returning all the articles but spelled
out why he cannot allow even the body spray to be given back.
“The accused had used the body spray to lure men. Since she’ll use the spray for this purpose, I cannot order its return and the spray will be in the custody of this court,’’ he said.
The court, however, returned the cellphone of a male co-accused in the case.

R Gopakumar, Thiru’puram

Free beer for villagers
Beer is no more a popular beverage among city folks only. It has crossed the
barrier and emerged as an equally sought after drink among the rural masses. This was clearly evident from two interesting incidents that took place in two coastal Orissa districts recently.
A truck loaded with beer met with an accident on a national highway at a place in coastal Puri district not far away from the state capital, Bhubaneswar.
As soon as the news of the mishap reached nearby villages, thousands of villagers rushed to the spot and began looting the beer bottles.
By the time the police reached the spot, half of the truck load of beer had already vanished.
The looters in another similar incident in coastal Jajpur district, however, had
to pay a price for their act recently.
No, they had not been caught red-handed by the police. The free booze left such a hangover on the villagers — mostly daily labourers — that they had to skip their work for a day, losing their wage in the process.

S T Beuria, Bhubaneshwar