PLF College teacher Amarjeet Kumar shows a lock broken by thieves who looted his home at Gandhi Nagar in Patna. Picture by Sachin

Patna, March 12: Criminals in the state capital have a love-hate relationship with the gods.

While some of them offered prayers to gods in the home of their victim (report published in The Telegraph on December 22, 2011), those who struck at the house of college teacher Amarjeet Kumar at Gandhi Nagar under Agamkuan police station did not even spare the money kept at the household shrine.

The incident — discovered this morning — also put a poser on the Patna police’s neighbourhood watch programme. Kumar, his wife Usha and mother Reshmi Devi had gone to Sikkim on March 8 to spend Holi with their son Sumit, an engineering student. Kumar had informed his neighbours and requested them to look after his home.

However, when the family returned around 5.30 this morning, they found the locks on the doors of the house broken.

“We went inside and found everything scattered around. Our LED television (priced Rs 40,000), jewellery worth Rs 3 lakh, clothes, utensils and Rs 20,000 was missing. Around Rs 3,000 kept near idols and pictures of gods at our household shrine was also missing. The thieves did not spare that money either,” Kumar, a teacher at PLF College, Masaurhi, told The Telegraph.

He added that the thieves had broken 11 locks in the single-storey house to get their booty. “We had locked up all the doors and the cupboards. The door leading to the roof was also locked. The thieves broke all the locks in the house. They must have taken a lot of time to carry out the theft,” he said.

Neighbours whom Kumar had informed about his trip were unwilling to comment on the incident. Kumar said: “They told me that they had checked our home last evening and everything was alright. This means that the theft must have occurred in the night. How can such an incident occur when the police claim they are constantly patrolling the streets?”

An officer at Agamkuan police station said: “We have lodged a complaint. We are trying to track the gang involved.”

Patna senior superintendent of police Alok Kumar did not answer calls.

This is not the first incident of theft at a residence in the city this year. On March 4, cash and valuables worth Rs 6 lakh was stolen from the house of railway employee Rishikesh Ojha at road number 24 under the jurisdiction Rajiv Nagar police station.

On February 22, two criminals entered the home of Patna Medical College and Hospital lecturer Surendra Prasad Singh at Sector E under the jurisdiction of Kankerbagh police station in daylight. They tried to strangulate Singh’s wife Aparna, who raised an alarm and forced the criminals to flee.

Residents, unhappy with the surge in crime, have started to question the effectiveness of police patrol.