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Jabalpur cops make chain snatcher undergo surgery to recover stolen jewellery
Moments before the thieves were arrested, one of them swallowed the evidence in a desperate attempt to cover his tracks. An X-ray later revealed that the piece of jewellery was ensconced in his guts.
Police in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur did not go bananas to retrieve a stolen good swallowed by a snatcher and opted for the surgical path to retrieve a traditional gold chain from his stomach.
Two men on a motorcycle snatched a mangalsutra from 70-year-old Kalavati Yadav, who was lying in bed in the courtyard of her house in Defence Colony, on Wednesday at around 4:45pm.
The police, who were informed about the incident, tracked down the two accused - Suraj Dumar, 20, and Raju Thapa, 25.
But moments before they were arrested, Dumar swallowed the evidence in a desperate attempt to cover his tracks. An X-ray later revealed that the piece of jewellery was ensconced in his guts.
The Mumbai Police were faced with a similar problem in 2016 and they had taken the messier banana route. They force-fed four dozen bananas to the snatcher to recover the stolen gold chain.
They, however, had to wait for at least two days before the chain finally slithered out of the thief’s system.
Police in Jabalpur opted for the surgical procedure on Dumar and recovered the jewellery within five minutes on Thursday.
“We consulted doctors at the Subhash Chandra Bose Medical College in Jabalpur and they assured that the operation would be safe. The endoscopic surgery took five minutes and we had the evidence in our hands,” additional superintendent of police Deepak Shukla said as he displayed the jewellery during a press conference.
He added that Dumar Suraj was fine.
“We are questioning both of them and there is evidence that they were involved in other loots also,” Shukla said.
The district’s superintendent of police Shashikant Shukla has announced a reward of ₹10,000 to the team that nabbed the accused and recovered the jewellery.
