Bengaluru: In a bizarre incident in Bengaluru, Karnataka’s capital, thieves seem to have pulled off an audacious heist by stealing an entire bus stop overnight. Daily commuters who had disembarked from their buses at the stop one night were in for a shock the next morning when they found the bus stop had completely vanished. This bus shelter, constructed entirely of steel, had been installed on Cunningham Road just a week ago at a cost of approximately Rs 10 lakh. The Bangalore Police have promptly registered a report regarding this audacious theft and have launched a search for the daring culprits.
This peculiar incident adds another chapter to the unusual occurrences of bus stop thefts in Bengaluru, a city where such events have been reported multiple times in the past, with none of the culprits being apprehended thus far.
According to an India Today report, the stolen bus stop, constructed entirely from steel, belonged to the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), responsible for operating government city buses in the city. The theft incident occurred about a month ago, but it was not reported to the police until September 30th, when N., an Associate Vice President of the company responsible for manufacturing bus shelters for BMTC, filed the complaint. Subsequently, the police have initiated a case after conducting an investigation into this unusual incident.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first occurrence of bus stops vanishing overnight in Bengaluru. Such incidents have transpired previously, sometimes due to actions by government departments themselves and, on other occasions, as a result of thieves making off with the entire structure. For instance, in March of this year, a bus stand in Kalyan Nagar that had stood for nearly three decades disappeared, allegedly to make way for commercial construction. Similarly, in 2015, a bus stop in the Doopanahalli area was stolen, and in 2014, a 20-year-old bus stop in BEML Layout-3 stage, Rajarajeshwari Nagar, vanished overnight.