Laptop thief caught red-handed at bus stand

Trichy: The central bus stand in the city continued to be an unsafe place for passengers as thieves are on the prowl with no proper mechanism in place to prevent them. A thief caught red-handed while lifting a passenger’s laptop from a bus on Tuesday exposed the insecure situation being faced by the passengers.

M Vadivel, 37, from Thillai Nagar in Trichy boarded a bus to Chennai and kept his bag containing a laptop worth Rs 40,000 on the rack. A few minutes later, he noticed a man attempting to lift his laptop. The alerted Vadivel caught him red-handed. After giving a sound thrashing, the passengers informed the bus stand outpost police. The police picked him up and recovered the laptop.

Police identified the culprit as P Sureshkumar, 44, from Ramji Nagar in Trichy, a locality known for professional thieves adept at lifting electronic devices and gadgets in and out of the state.

Tuesday’s incident was not new to the passengers and police at the central bus stand. Such crimes occur regularly in the past and police had made several arrests. It may be noted that Cantonment police arrested notorious laptop thief R Muthuraman, 40, from Ramji Nagar in March 2018 and recovered 10 laptops from him which were stolen from buses in Trichy.

A police officer on condition of anonymity pointed out the factors that give a free hand to the thieves to operate at the central bus stand. The poorly-lit areas, particularly the Coimbatore bus bay, malfunctioning of some CCTV cameras in the bus bays and the failure of police patrolling were said to be the major reasons for such untoward incidents.

The central bus stand is maintained by Trichy Corporation while the police take care of the security aspects. The police officer also pointed out the absence of public address system in the bus stand.

“The policemen on duty should walk around the bus stand alerting the passengers about the thieves through the wireless microphone to scare away the culprits. Sadly, several policemen are indifferent towards their job,” said the officer.

When brought the issue to the notice of the commissioner of police, Trichy city, A Amalraj, he promised to look into the issue.