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Police launch probe into missing truck carrying tomatoes worth ₹21 lakh
According to the officials, investigators suspect the driver and cleaner of the truck, which left the Kolar vegetable market on Thursday, must have stolen the tomatoes and have launched an investigation into the matter based on a complaint filed by Vinay Reddy, the owner of SVT traders, on Sunday.
Kolar Police have initiated an investigation into the missing case of a local truck carrying 11 tonnes of tomatoes worth ₹21 lakh bound for Rajasthan, officers familiar with the developments said on Monday.
According to the officials, investigators suspect the driver and cleaner of the truck, which left the Kolar vegetable market on Thursday, must have stolen the tomatoes and have launched an investigation into the matter based on a complaint filed by Vinay Reddy, the owner of SVT traders, on Sunday.
Reddy explained that they had loaded 11 tonnes of tomatoes, neatly packaged in 750 boxes, onto a truck from Kolar tomato mandi.
“The plan was to unload the consignment at Mohana Sabji Mandi in Jaipur by midnight on Saturday. The truck was equipped with an inbuilt GPS tracking system for added security,” Reddy told reporters.
The truck, which was being tracked through the GPS tracking system, had covered around 1,800 km since it left Kolar. However, when the truck did not reach Jaipur, the trader tried to contact the driver, but his phone was switched off, a senior police officer said.
The concerned trader then filed a complaint at the Kolar police station, stating that the truck had gone missing.
“Based on a complaint from one of the traders based in Kolar, we have initiated a preliminary inquiry into the matter. No FIR has been registered in the matter yet since we had to verify whether the driver had met with any accident on the way to their destination or if the tomatoes got stolen. So, an inquiry was initiated, and we collected details from the complainant in the matter,” said a senior police officer.
Reddy alleged that the vehicle tracking showed that the consignment destined for Jaipur was diverted and delivered to a local vegetable market in Ahmedabad. Following the truck’s mysterious disappearance, Vinay’s father, Muni Reddy, filed a police complaint.
According to Vinay, he last communicated with the driver around 9 pm on Saturday, and the driver assured him that the consignment would arrive at the Jaipur mandi by 11 pm.
“In the morning, I was informed that the consignment had not reached the market. When I tried to contact the driver, his phone was also found to be switched off. There was no other way to reach him. So, we had to approach the police here,” he said.
Afterwards, Vinay contacted his acquaintances in Jaipur and received information from local sources indicating that the tomatoes had been sold in Ahmedabad.
“We suspect that these tomatoes were sold off by the driver but we still haven’t been able to get in touch with him. It has also come to notice that the same truck was not used to transport the consignment to Ahmedabad. We need to get it verified,” he said.
The consignment in question belonged to three parties, and they are likely to arrive in Ahmedabad to file complaints with the local police station there, the above-cited officer said.
Before this incident, a farm in Goni Somanahalli village in Belur taluk of Karnataka’s Hassan district witnessed the theft of tomatoes worth ₹2.5 lakh on July 1.
Thieves absconded with 50-60 bags of tomatoes from a woman farmer’s agricultural field, prompting the filing of a theft case at the Halebeedu police station, officials said.
In another incident, a couple from neighbouring Tamil Nadu was arrested for hijacking a truck loaded with 2.5 tonnes of tomatoes in Bengaluru on July 8.
According to the police, the couple was part of a gang of highway robbers that intercepted Mallesh, a farmer from Hiriyur in Chitradurga district, at Chikkajala on July 8.
Their demands for money, claiming the farmer’s truck had caused an accident with their car, were met with refusal. The miscreants resorted to assaulting the farmer, forcibly removing him from the truck and driving away with the vehicle and its tomato cargo, police said.
Based on the complaint lodged by the farmer, the RMC Yard police successfully tracked the vehicle’s movement, ultimately leading to the gang’s capture.
(With PTI inputs)
