Bengaluru: In the quiet of the night, an entire bus shelter has simply vanished; Missing from busy 100 Feet Road in Indiranagar on the night of May 28th or the early hours of May 29th. Bizarre! Nobody knows where it went. But shocked commuters who arrived as usual at the stop near New Horizon school, discovered that their shelter was gone - pillars, chairs, the awning, ceiling, every last bit.
The only thing that the bus commuters found at the Doopanahalli bus stop as they waited in a complete state of shock, for their BMTC buses to arrive, were the sawed down ends of the metal pillars that had held up the whole structure! The bus shelter beams had been cut off, clearly using powerful metal cutters with no sign of even a tiny fragment of the dismantled remains of the bus shelter to be seen anywhere.
Many commuters were heard saying that the bus shelter had been stolen by miscreants. Others were convinced it was the work of the Corporation, who were planning on changing the location of the bus shelter. The question of how a huge bus shelter walked away in plain sight was of course the one that no-one had answer for.
Until, Mr. S. Raghu, the area corporator and the constituency MLA rushed to the spot. He had set up 42 bus shelters in this constituency C.V. Raman Nagar, including this missing one. Mr Raghu’s bus shelters flaunted his name and pictures, as well as that of BJP linked politicians like P.C. Mohan, MP, K. Chandrashekar, Corporator and Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Not even a 100 yards away is another bus shelter. It screams Congress. Wanna bet, how long this one will stay put?
The bus stand on the day it was re-installed in December last year
“This is not the first time this bus shelter is disappearing from that spot. It disappeared once in the early hours of December 4, 2014, and there was a huge protest in the area over this incident. However, we re-installed the bus shelter in four days and it was re-inaugurated on December 9, 2014,” said S. Raghu, MLA. “Whoever has done this, has come prepared with cutters and a truck and they have executed the bus-stop heist in a meticulous manner, and I don't think it could have been done without the help of the local police,” he added.
He alleges that the removal of the shelter is the handiwork of the owner of the 140x170 plot situated behind the bus shelter. “They have colluded with the local police and are indulging in misdemeanors like these. I heard that there is some commercial complex coming up on that plot and a bus shelter right in front of a commercial establishment will bring down its value. There’s no mystery. That’s the story behind the disappearing shelter,” he said. “Why did the person, who removed this bus shelter, not think of the poor bus commuters who have to now wait in the sun and rain while waiting for a bus?,” asks the MLA.
“Though it does not look good on me going and lodging a complaint of theft of a bus shelter, I approached the Indiranagar police who flatly refused to intervene saying the incident did not happen in their jurisdiction, ”Raghu added. “I have spent close to Rs 2 lakh on each shelter and let me tell you, by June 4, there will be a new shelter in place,” the MLA said.
