Thinking on her feet, woman prevents break-in, robbery

Bangalore : The quick reaction of woman when her family and her house was under attack from robbers rescued the day. Roopa Devaraj, 38, a resident of BDA Layout, in 4th Stage BTM Layout, and her husband, were asleep when they heard weird noises at 3 am on October 8.

The noises seemed to be coming from the main door, her husband Devaraj asked her to look what it was. In her complaint to the police, Roopa said that since their house was located on the roadside, she thought the noises were coming from the street and ignored it and went back to sleep.However, when the sounds persisted, Roopa was up and alert, and wondered if it was her nephew Chandru coming home after his shift at a cab aggregator service. 

However Chandra was already home and sleeping in the same room as her son. When she reached the door to see if it was him, she heard voices of more than one person from behind the door. And then she realised that someone was trying to break in. Roopa said that she immediately alerted her husband who came out of the bedroom shouting at the miscreants. Meanwhile Chandru and Roopa’s school-going son woke up hearing the shouts.

 As the miscreants continued to hammer on the door, Chandru and Devaraj, stood leaning against it, to resist the assault.Speaking to BM, Roopa said, “When Chandru was holding the door from coming off the hinges, one of the miscreants cleaved the wood with a weapon and it scraped my son’s leg. Yet, he didn’t let go of the hold. With every blow, they seemed to be getting closer to breaking the door down,” said Roopa.When their hammering continued relentless, Roopa hit upon an idea. “I had some mobile numbers of the Begur station policemen on my phone and I decided to call them up. To make sure the miscreants heard me, I went to the window and started calling the cops. However, all my calls to five policemen went unanswered. Meanwhile I started shouting at them, telling them to leave as I had called  the police,” said Roopa.

Meanwhile, she heard one of the criminal say, “ long etkollo,” meaning take out the machete. Roopa then called Madappa of the Begur police station. He immediately took the call and when he heard the urgency in her voice, he said that a Hoysala was on the way. I warned the miscreants again that cops are were on their way. I think they heard my conversation with the police and decided to abandon the dacoity attempt.”Devaraj said that the criminals walked away from their house, till the end of the road, instead of running. When Madappa and his colleague reached their house, the attackers had evaded.