A bizarre theft occurred in Bengaluru when a newly installed bus shelter, along with its valuable steel structure worth Rs 10 lakh, mysteriously vanished just one week after its installation. The Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) was responsible for managing and maintaining this particular bus shelter, which was situated in the Cunningham Road area of the city.
The incident prompted the filing of a theft case by N Ravi Reddy, an associate vice-president of the company responsible for constructing BMTC bus shelters in Bengaluru. Surprisingly, the disappearance had gone unnoticed by authorities until Mr. Reddy filed a complaint on September 30, nearly a month after the bus shelter had disappeared. This mysterious vanishing act took place near the Police Commissioner’s office, just about 1 km from Vidhana Soudha, which is the legislative building in the city. To unravel the puzzle, the police have initiated an investigation, scrutinizing nearby CCTV footage in search of potential suspects.
The timeline of events is perplexing as the bus stand was initially installed on August 21, only to be stolen on August 28. Astonishingly, it took authorities a month to become aware of the theft, highlighting the audacity and stealth of the perpetrators.
This peculiar case of a stolen bus shelter is not an isolated incident in Bengaluru. In March, a three-decade-old bus stop at HRBR Layout vanished overnight. According to local reports, this bus stop in Kalyan Nagar was donated by the Lions Club in 1990 but was removed overnight to make way for a commercial establishment.
This recent disappearance of a bus shelter in Bengaluru bears an eerie resemblance to past incidents. In 2015, the Doopanahalli bus stop near Horizon School also disappeared overnight, leaving the community baffled. A year prior, in 2014, a 20-year-old bus stop went missing in BEML Layout III Stage, Rajarajeshwarinagar, Bengaluru, adding to the city’s growing list of bizarre bus shelter disappearances.