A woman whose iPhone was stolen while she was in Varanasi with her parents claimed that the Uttar Pradesh Police did not act even after the pickpocket was identified and the phone's location was detected. Sarah took to X to narrate her ordeal in a thread and even shared a picture of the FIR and a CCTV footage of the robbery.
Sarah was on a pilgrimage trip with her parents in Varanasi on January 29. She was at the Nai Sarak Chowk which is near the Kashi Vishwanath Temple and Dashashwamedh Ghat when the incident happened. As seen in the CCTV footage, a man wearing a black sweatshirt, pickpocketed her four-month old iPhone 13 and walked away unnoticed.
Sarah realised it a few minutes later and panicked. The family filed an FIR at the nearest police station as well. “We were told to write 'phone gum gaya hai' instead of 'chori hogya hai' so that it's not a case police has to work on,” she wrote.
“After realizing there is a CCTV footage, we contacted the shopkeeper and asked him to help us see it. Thankfully we got the proof of it. We shared it with police and they IDENTIFIED him as 'Vijay'-someone who's a known thief in area and has gone to the jail multiple times,” she added.
Sarah noted that there still has not been any update from the police about her phone. The iPhone's location was also detected to be somewhere in Jharkhand. “A pilgrimage trip to Varanasi & Kashi Vishwanath temple turned into a traumatic criminal experience for me and my family. Such people near the temple arena demean the sanctity of the place and make it unsafe for tourists who want to visit for spiritual purposes,” she added.
“We don't expect to find the phone, but the emotional and financial damage this incident has done to me and my family will take us days to recover from. Had to write this thread as a proof of experience of a tourist in the Spiritual City of India and with the police of Varanasi,” Sarah wrote in a separate tweet.
Since being shared online, Sarah’s post has gone viral with over seven lakh views. Social media users flooded the comments section with their own experiences as well.
“That’s usual for them. My F-I-L dropped his mobile and someone picked it and asked for twice the money of the phone cost to return it. I gave them exact location of the culprit but they didn’t get the phone back. Just took the complaint and didn’t even bother to write the FIR,” a user wrote.
Another user commented, “Same incident happened to us as well. Sorry but @Uppolice has the same modus operandi for this type of incident. They don’t want to look on small cases until it's for someone important. They will talk you very politely to write 'lost' instead of 'steal’.
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