INDIA COMPUTER THEFT Computer thefts soar high, police clueless - Ludhiana - City - NEWS - The Times of India:

Computer thefts soar high, police clueless
Vaivasvat Venkat, TNN 16 September 2009, 10:47pm IST

LUDHIANA: Showroom owners dealing in computers and laptops are highly concerned about their security following the loot of laptops worth over Rs

30 lakh from two showrooms located on the busy Pakhowal road on Tuesday night, wherein the security guard was taken hostage at gunpoint.

According to the information yielded by Ravinder Singh owner of ST Computers, a franchisee of Del Computers, on Tuesday night, four unidentified persons came to his shop in a car. Whereas, two of them sat in the car, other two took the security guard hostage on gunpoint. After breaking into the showroom they took away around 20 laptops and cash worth Rs 75,000, leaving the security guard tied in the showroom.

These two accused then targeted another multibrand showroom falling in the next building. “The showroom was broken when I came in the morning at around 7 am. I found 32 laptops costing around 15 lakh missing,” said Tarun, owner of the showroom.

Both owners who are left shocked by the incident said that despite such incidents on the rise nothing has been done by the police.

They have failed to trace even a single case and the entire situation was hopeless, they maintained.

On February 20, August computers in Gobind Nagar had fallen prey to thieves who took away 10 LCDs, 23 laptops, seven cameras and a cash of Rs 2.5 lakh.

Just three days before on February 17, thieves had stolen laptops and computer accessories worth over Rs 2 lakh including 5 laptops and other material from Anex Computers near Samrala Chowk in the city.

In yet another incident, 13 laptops were stolen from Computer Home, a shop selling computers and accessories in the Model Town area. The case was registered on complaint of the owners in both the cases, but the police is still groping in the dark whereas the cases continue to hang fire.

In another case that had left scared people of the posh area of Krishna Nagar near Ghumar Mandi market on November 5, 2008, four unidentified persons looted Rs 2 lakh in addition to costly computers from Big Byte Computer Hardware shop.