Bandits use spooks and sex for looting trucks

KOLKATA: Trained pigeons and sex workers are the tools of trade for highway bandits who prey on truckers. These bandits in Bengal, Orissa and Bihar are spooking truck drivers or luring them with sex to loot their favourite consignments of fertiliser or FMCG products.

Even the Crime Investigations Department (CID) of West Bengal police have been flummoxed by their modus operandi. Their method only came to light  after a few arrests were made. In the first method, 13-14 gangs operating along the national highways in the three states, let loose  trained black pigeons with red battery operated lamps tied to them over trucks in the dead of night. According to sources in the CID, many of the truckers, often in inebriated state, were fooled into thinking that they were seeing ghosts. Subsequently, they'd desert the trucks leaving it to be looted by the bandits.

"In the darkness of the night, all the drivers see are red lights flying all around and most of them being superstitious, flee leaving their consignments at the mercy of bandits," said a senior CID official. The CID has also captured few of the pigeons from the arrested bandits.

Moreover, the highway bandits have more temptations for the not-so superstitious truckers. They hire professional sex workers who stand at points along the highway. Lured by them, these truckers are waylaid into the darkness leaving the bandits to loot the trucks. The local police stations received complaints from a number of big transport companies carrying fertilisers or FMCG products. CID officers in the garb of truck drivers started patrolling the highway. Ultimately, the CID was able to trap these criminals along with their accomplices — sex workers and trained pigeons.