Caring two hoots to a posse of policemen standing guard at Mahatma Gandhi Marg, which is choc-a-bloc with rallies and dharnas, burglars broke into a State Government employee’s residence in Unit III and decamped with the loot on Friday evening.
The house of Srinivas Mishra, an assistant section officer with Fisheries and Animal Resources Development Department, is a stone’s throw away from where the cops are deployed all day. On Friday, when he returned home, he found his house burgled. Around 14 tolas of gold jewellery, gadgets and an unspecified amount of cash kept for wedding of his younger brother, who works in West Africa, as well as $ 860 were stolen.
“When I reached home at 8.40 pm, I found the front grill open. The valuables, jewellery and cash kept in an almirah were gone,” he said.
None of his neighbours noticed the thieves with perimeter walls of six and a half feet high blocking their view. The Kharavela Nagar police pressed in a scientific team and a sniffer dog which went through the nearby slum to the main road before losing its way.
One Held for ‘Rape’
An employee of a private TV channel was arrested by Mahila Police on charge of rape and blackmailing a married woman. SP Laxmi Kanta Nayak, the accused, was subjected to medical test after he was held. The woman had lodged the FIR on August 1.
Nayak is accused of taking Rs 50,000 from the woman to help her in tracing her missing husband. He is accused of sexually assaulting her. Police said he also blackmailed the woman to extract money.