Onion burglars in MP caught while selling red bulb dirt cheap

Bhopal: Stupidity never pays. Two ‘burglars’ of onions, currently sold at premium owing to scarcity of the vegetable in the market, have learnt it a hard way. Ajey Jatav (25) and Jitu Valmiki (23) had tried to take advantage of the situation to make a fortune by stealing onions from private warehouses in Gwalior. They had allegedly broken into several such godowns in the last couple of weeks and made off with tonnes of onions.

Vegetable merchants had lodged several complaints of theft of onions from their storehouses with the local police station. Both the ‘onion stealers’ had, however, proved elusive for the police. The two “burglars” finally ran out of their luck on Wednesday, thanks to their foolishness of disposing of the stolen goods quickly at the local market at dirt cheap rate.

They carried the loot to the local vegetable market in Gwalior city and sold them at Rs 50 per kg when the commodity commanded a price of Rs 120 per kilo on the day.

The other onion sellers in the market immediately alerted the police leading to arrest of the duo. “Ajey was arrested while trying to flee. Later, Jitu was arrested following tip off by Ajey,” police said. “They would not have drawn attention of other onion sellers had they not decided to sell the onions dirt cheap,” police said.