In an ingenious move, a group of villagers in Odisha’s Bhadrak district deployed a drone to monitor the movement of a thief who took refuge in a water body early on Wednesday and caught him after a couple of hours of vigil.
Earlier, they captured the accomplice of the thief, foiling the duo’s bid to steal midday meal rice from the village school. The incident from Charibatia village took place at around 2am on Wednesday when locals spotted four people attempting to steal rice stored at the local school. As villagers raised an alarm and gave chase, one of the thieves jumped into a nearby pond while his accomplices fled. Villagers, though, caught one of them while two others managed to escape.
“We promptly surrounded the pond and used dry grass to create a ring of fire around its perimeter. We kept vigil using a drone to monitor the pond aerially, ensuring the thief could not escape,” Manas Mohanty, a villager, said.