A video has gone viral wherein two men are seen stealing flower pots and storing them in the boot of their high-end vehicle with a VIP or a vanity registration number. The incident reportedly took place in Gurgaon, Haryana. The man who recorded the incident’s footage shared it on social media on Monday, February 27.
In the video that has now gone viral, multiple flower pots filled with in-bloom flowers are seen maintained in a place where a poster advertising the G20 conference can also be seen. Two men are seen lifting a few flower pots and loading them in their high-end SUV’s boot.
#G20 के सौंदर्यीकरण के “चिंदी चोर”
— Raj Verma-Journalist🇮🇳 (@RajKVerma4) February 27, 2023
गुरुग्राम में शंकर चौक पर #Kia कार सवार ने दिनदहाड़े पौधों के गमले उड़ाए ।।@gurgaonpolice @DC_Gurugram @cmohry @MunCorpGurugram @OfficialGMDA @TrafficGGM pic.twitter.com/aeJ2Sbejon
Enraged, several users left various comments and shared the video across social media platforms.
This affluent but mentally bankrupt thief should be identified and arrested@gurgaonpolice pic.twitter.com/4v9zDrdj0E
— Rohit Agarwal 🇮🇳 (@ragarwal) February 28, 2023
Netizens were taken aback that a wealthy person driving a luxury SUV worth lakhs of rupees was engaging in such pettiness.
40 लाख की गाड़ी और पौधों के लिए 40 रुपये नहीं 😅🤦🏻♂️
— Tanmay Shankar(तन्मय शंकर)🇮🇳 (@Shanktan) February 28, 2023
Some opined that since the number of the car is visible, the Gurugram police must take action against the accused, even if he is a government official.
Number is visible, to be punished even if it belongs to Govt Servant.
— Subras (@nbosivas) February 28, 2023
After the video shared by @RajKVerma4 went viral, the Deputy Commissioner of Gurgaon took cognisance and asked the Gurugram police to intervene and investigate the matter.
@gurgaonpolice, Kindly look into this matter.
— DC Gurugram (@DC_Gurugram) February 28, 2023
OpIndia tried to take out details of the car that was seen in the video and this is what we found. As per the details, the car is registered in Hisar, Haryana. Though the name of the owner of the car is hidden in the information obtained, the owner of the car in the video can be safely classified as some wealthy individual because the ‘0006’ series’ is a VIP or vanity registration number, for which the owner must pay an additional cost of Rs 1 lakh under the modified Haryana Motor Vehicle Regulations, 1993.
This is, however, not the first such incident that has been reported. In fact, Agra police were recently forced to stand guard over flowerpots along the airport-Taj Mahal route after more than 70 flowerpots were reported stolen on a single night from the Selfie Point on Fatehabad Road, displayed earlier this month to welcome a delegation from the G20 countries ahead of the summit in September 2023. This prompted the Agra Development Authority vice chairman Charchit Gaur to get an FIR filed at the Tajganj Police Station on 14 February. After an investigation, 2 persons were arrested.
Similarly, in 2019, an elderly man was captured on camera stealing plant pots from Delhi’s vertical garden. The video of the incident was shared on Facebook on October 8.
The video showed the old man, dressed formally, pulling out one of the plastic pots from the vertical garden built on the pillars of a flyover in the national capital. He was then seen emptying the plant and the soil from the pot which he managed to pull out from the vertical garden before putting the empty pot in his bag. As soon as the man was caught red-handed by a passer-by for stealing the pot, he was seen running away from the spot as the passer-by called him.
