"He Thought It Would Be Forgotten by Now"...Indian Man Who Stole a Sack of Wheat at 20 Arrested After 45 Years

Accused of stealing a sack of wheat worth about 1,600 won 45 years ago

A man in his 60s who stole a sack of wheat with his friends around the age of 20 in India has been arrested by police 45 years after the crime.

He stole wheat on impulse at 20...arrested after 45 years

Wheat. The photo is unrelated to any specific wording in the article. Pixabay

On the 10th (local time), Indian broadcaster NDTV reported that Salim Sheikh (65), who lives in the Khargone area of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, was arrested on the 7th when police suddenly showed up at his home. Sheikh is accused of stealing a sack of wheat worth about 100 rupees (about 1,600 won at the time) from a field in the Khargone area in 1980, when he was 20, together with six friends. According to police, the price of 100 kg of high-quality wheat at that time was in the range of 100 to 115 rupees (about 1,800 won).

NDTV reported that Sheikh and his accomplices appear to have committed the crime in their youth under a momentary impulse. At the time, in cases of such minor offenses, it was not uncommon for cases to effectively fizzle out if the perpetrators fled.

Immediately after the crime, Sheikh fled and settled about 100 km away from the scene of the theft, and has since lived quietly running a grocery store with his son. He confessed that as decades passed, he thought the police would have forgotten the case altogether.

Arrested during a special police investigation campaign

The arrest was made in the course of a special investigation campaign by the police. Over the past month, police have been reviewing previously issued arrest warrants and long-unsolved cold cases all at once.

During this process, the case file of one of the accomplices, Salim Mohammad, resurfaced as a subject of investigation. Mohammad had fled after the crime and had been designated a fugitive by the court, which issued a warrant for his arrest, but police confirmed that he had already died. Police identified Sheikh’s whereabouts through Mohammad’s relatives and ultimately succeeded in arresting him. After his arrest, Sheikh appeared in court, and the court rejected his bail application and ordered him detained. It is not known how the other accomplices are being dealt with.

Police explained that although the amount involved in the case was trivial, it remained on record because it was a group crime involving seven people, and it stayed unsolved for a long time as a cold case while the officers in charge changed several times. NDTV reported that the case is attracting attention not so much because of the seriousness of the crime, but because such a petty theft has been solved after several decades, becoming a talking point not only in Madhya Pradesh but also in nearby regions.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.