Cigarettes worth Rs 3 crore stolen from godowns

Burglars in Bengal seem to have found a new object of fancy - cigarettes. Godowns across the state that stock a city-based tobacco major's cigarettes have reported the theft of goods worth nearly Rs 3 crore over the last nine months. None of the cases has been cracked yet and the burglars have remained elusive. On July 16, a gang of burglars raided a cigarette godown at Andul Station Road.

 "They broke into the godown and fled with cigarettes worth of Rs 29 lakh," said godown owner Sanjib Singh. He pointed out that without a vehicle, the burglars couldn't have possibly fled with such a huge quantity of cigarettes. The burglars didn't take more than an hour to empty the entire stock. Singh lodged a complaint with Howrah (rural) police, but they are yet to make progress in the case.

 A few days before that, on May 26, a similar burglary took place at a Baranagar godown. "It was a Saturday evening and my brother downed the ground-floor shutters of my godown at Sashibushan Niyogi Garden Road," said Partho Pal, the distributor and godown owner. "The godown was closed on Sunday and when I opened it on Monday morning, the entire stock was gone," he added. The stock cost around Rs 12 lakh. He lodged a complaint with Baranagar police, but any headway is yet to be made. The biggest theft was reported on June 24 from a godown in Garfa from where cigarettes worth Rs 40 lakh went missing.

Monoranjan Das, the godown owner, said he lodged a complaint with Garfa police, and the detective department's anti-burglary section is now probing the case. On the same night, cigarettes worth Rs 8 lakh were stolen from a godown in Baruipur and burglars had even tried to break into Sanjib Singh's Andul godown. Probe revealed that similar burglaries had taken place in cigarette godowns in Baguiati, Basirhat, Asansol, Durgapur and Tarakeswar as well. Intriguingly, all the distributors work for a city-based tobacco major.

At Baguiati, police retrieved CCTV footage of the burglars, but none could be identified. Investigating officers suspect that a big and powerful racket is behind the crime and 'traditional' burglars or history-sheeters are not involved, making it difficult for police to track them down.