Woman Fights Off Four Burglars

In an outstanding display of bravery, a woman in her 40s smashed a burglary plan, set by four men, who disguised themselves as employees of a cable TV company to enter her apartment.

The incident took place at Beleghata Main Road where homemaker Chanda Agarwal and her mother-in-law Gita Devi were the only family members at home when the doorbell rang at 11.10am. Chanda Devi opened the door to her second-floor apartment to find four men greeting her and introducing her as ‘cable-men’.

Narrating the episode, she said, "I knew at once that they weren't who they said they were, although they weren't shabbily dressed. Before I could say anything, they pushed me aside to enter our home, one of them heading straight to the bedroom where my mother-in-law was."

Three out of the four men muffled Chanda Devi, while the other one tried to pin down Gita Devi. In the meantime, Chanda Devi kept on screaming for help, which resulted in alarming many of her neighbors. Shashikant Jaiswal, who lives on the third floor of the same building, was the first to respond to her cry for help. Hearing the neighbors approach, the group panicked and ran off. But Shashikant Jaiswal, along with two other neighbors, Gopal Sen and Mohit Sarkar, helped in catching off two of the four men. The other two, including the suspected gang leader, fled.

Two bags were seized from the arrested men, one containing a set of clothes and the other packed with tools and tackles that included a range, a screwdriver, a steel cutter and a knife, the police said. The duo were identified as Suman Haldar, a resident of the Lake neighborhood, and Raju Sheikh, from Titagarh.

At the time of the attempted robbery, Chanda's husband was at work and the couple's son Keshaw, a Class II at DPS Newtown was at school. The bravery of the woman at the time of panic helped in saving two lives.