Uttarkhand, ascetic looters caught stealing from flood victims
Mumbai (AsiaNews) - Fingers of flood victims cut off to steal rings and other precious items; Hindu temples plundered of pilgrims offerings; banks looted of millions of rupees. This is the other side of the torrential rains have crippled the Uttarkhand, the northern state of India in recent days. While the government, army, charities and volunteers are engaged in rescue operations, police discovered and arrested gangs of sadhus (ascetics) laden with bags full of gold and money. Meanwhile, the death toll is becoming more dramatic and according to official estimates may soon touch the 1 thousand dead.
Sandeep Rai Rathore, Inspector General of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), explains that it was the attitude of the same sadhu that raised police suspicions: "These men refused to board the helicopters without their bags, that were left behind because too heavy. After a check we found that the bags contained 14 million rupees (about 178,500 Euros) in cash and jewels worth hundreds of thousands of rupees".
The officers led
the group to the State police. Surveys
have shown that the ascetics stole money from ATMs destroyed in the floods and
took the jewelry from corpses. Due
to the reports of rescue units, the police have identified other looters, all
sadhus.
"What
first alerted us - says one volunteer - was that some of them, at the time of
the evacuation, were carrying bundles of new banknotes. We checked and saw that
the money was marked and coming from a bank."
A
police officer said that he felt bad after hearing the confession of one of
these sadhus. The
man was arrested for wearing too many rings and bracelets. "He
revealed - says the officer - he had plundered the dead pilgrims, even cutting
off their fingers."
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