Last week, my grandma’s mobile phone was stolen. She was at the vegetable market when a young boy approached her in tears saying he couldn’t find his mother. Grandma gave him her phone to make a call; but he took it and disappeared into the crowd before she could react.
My father and I took grandma to the police station to lodge a complaint.
“This seems to be the work of a new gang training children to steal mobile phones from women,” said the inspector. “There was another incident in the park too. The gang chooses places without CCTV cameras.”
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My father bought a new phone for grandma. The next day, I went to the Clock Tower Park opposite my house.
My friend Ajay and his grandma were there and I warned her not to give her mobile phone to any weeping kids. She agreed and went off on her walk while Ajay and I played basketball.
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Suddenly, we heard her shouting, “Catch that boy!” Ajay and I ran to the park’s entrance gate. There was my grandma at the park entrance holding the boy’s hand tightly. Ajay and I caught the boy. A little girl stood crying.
Ajay’s grandma said she had received a video call from my grandma while she was walking. So she sat at a park bench to talk.
She heard a girl crying aloud and went to check if she was okay.
But she did not cut the video call and was holding the phone in such a way that my grandma could see another face — it was the boy who stole her mobile phone at the vegetable market! Immediately, my grandma rushed from our home to the park.
In the meantime, at the park, the boy had told Ajay’s grandma that his sister was hurt and asked for her phone to call his mother. “I forgot Rohit’s warning,” grandma said. The boy took the phone and the two kids began to run when my grandma caught him.
The truth
The kids, Sriram and Ratna, said that their parents had died in an accident and their uncle and aunt trained them to steal mobile phones. They would be beaten if they refused. The uncle and aunt were arrested.
The inspector got Sriram and Ratna admitted into an orphanage. We visited them one weekend. Sriram told my grandma he was glad she caught him that day; otherwise, his sister and he would not have been rescued from their life of crime.