The land mafia fled the scene before the arrival of the cops. (Image: Screengrab/X)
The mafia continued to carry out the work in secret, until they levelled the pond to vanish completely
The strange thefts in Bihar continue as the newest addition to the list of “stolen” bridge and train engine is a pond. Locals were in a shock when they found a hut in place of the pond in Darbhanga district.
The land mafia — accused of filling the pond to take over the land — fled from the area before the cops, called by the locals, arrived.
According to a NDTV report, the pond was owned by the public where fishing and other activities also took place. However, inflated prices of land in the district made the mafia’s eyes land on the water body.
When local and zonal bodies received complaints of pond-filling, they inspected the situation and put a stop to the filling momentarily. Reportedly, they made some seizures too.
Even after the interruption, the mafia continued to carry out the work in secret, until they levelled the pond to vanish completely.
Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO), Amit Kumar, was quoted as saying “People say the pond was filled with soil within 10-15 days. The work has done only at night. Officials had visited the spot earlier and even seized some items.”
This comes just days after a decomissioned airplane got stuck under a bridge in the Motihari district, disrupting traffic for over an hour on NH-27.
The scrapped plane was being transported to Assam from Mumbai where it got stuck under the Piprakothi bridge in Motihari. Preliminary reports suggest that the driver of the truck misjudged the underneath height of the overbridge, as a result, the plane got stuck.
It’s worth noting that the most strange thefts have taken place in Bihar, something so unusual, that most of the people won’t think of stealing it.
In 2022, an entire diesel engine was stolen — part by part — from a railway yard in Begusarai district. The thieves had dug out a tunnel connecting to the yard to steal the parts, police had said.
Slowly, they stole the entire engine that had been at the yard for repair works.
In the same year, the whole of a 60-foot abandoned bridge disappeared one night in Bihar’s Rohtas district. And no, it was not magic, but a group of thieves pretending to be officials from the irrigation department tore apart the bridge via JCB, gas-cutters, and some other equipment and managed to escape with the heavy loot.
Thieves stole the iron bridge, which was built around the year 1972 on the Arrah canal in broad daylight. The bridge had become quite old and was declared dangerous. Since then, it had not been in use.
Funnily, the thieves pulled it off in merely three days, with locals and officials having no hint about it.
