Hearing a noise coming from out of the military guesthouse on Rest House Road in the dark of the night, an Army officer and his aide sprang to action and took on a gang of sandalwood thieves armed with saws and axes early on Sunday.
Eventually, Major Bharadwaj (36) and the help at the guesthouse, Rosaiah, were admitted to hospital with injuries, while the tree they heroically attempted to save had a few branches chopped off.
The officer, who was staying in the guesthouse with his wife and a help, woke up to a sound a few metres from his accommodation around 3 a.m. He alerted Mr. Rosaiah, and both of them stepped out into the garden to find that five to six men had chopped down branches of a sandalwood tree.
They managed to catch hold of two thieves. However, the group then pounced on Major Bharadwaj and Mr. Rosaiah and attacked them with saws and axes. The thieves then managed to escape.
Major Bharadwaj was hit on his head and he sustained some injuries. He was initially admitted to Mallya Hospital from where he went to Command Hospital. The police said his condition is stable.
Since it was dark, Major Bharadwaj was unable to see the faces of the thieves properly, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Sandeep Patil. “Although the premises has CCTV cameras at the entry and exit points, these have not recorded anything suspicious,” he said.
He suspected that the thieves jumped over the compound wall to enter the guesthouse and quarters.
“We have some leads and suspect that the gang is from Tamil Nadu,” he said.
The gang, operating out of the neighbouring State, is known to take inputs from locals and recce the area, before attempting to take down the tree in the middle of the night.
The police have sent teams to various locations in Tamil Nadu to locate the gang, said Mr. Patil. Cubbon Park police have register a case under section dealing with sandalwood theft as well as attempt to murder.
The attack comes in the wake of a similar foiled theft at the institute of Wood Science and Technology in Sadashivnagar on Saturday morning.
