Thief cooks and eats, flees with loot in Kolkata

KOLKATA: A thief broke into the house of a widow at Narendrapur on the city’s southern fringes, had a meal of rice and potato fries, slept on the bed, exchanged a low-watt bulb in the widow’s bedroom with a powerful one from another room, and fled with Rs 48,000 and some gold jewellery.
The widow, Shefali Sardar, said, “I left my Narendrapur Adarsha Pally home on Friday evening to visit my pregnant daughter at her in-laws’ place at Sonarpur’s Uttarayan Pally.I live alone as my son works in Bengaluru. I had planned to return home on Friday itself, but it started raining and my daughter’s in-laws asked me to stay back for the night.”
She further said, “When I returned home, I was surprised to find the kitchen door open. The kitchen was untidy and someone had cooked some rice and potato fries and eaten them off an unwashed plate lying in the sink. Remnants of the rice and fries were on the plate.”
“Moreover, the lock on a door, leading from the kitchen to another room, was broken,” she added.
Sardar's worst fears came true on entering the bedroom. “Not only was my bed a mess with someone having slept on it, the almirah had been broken open and ransacked. My son-in-law had given me Rs 45,000 for my daughter’s medical needs and I had Rs 3,000 savings. All the cash and some gold jewellery were gone. I also realized that the low-power bulb in my bedroom had been replaced with a powerful one from another room,” she said.
Cops said they were probing the complaint and verifying the claim about the stolen amount.