Rajasthan-bound tomato-laden truck stolen in Kolar

Kolar, NT Bureau: Amid soaring prices, miscreants on Sunday stole a truck laden with tomatoes worth Rs 21 lakh which were being transported to Rajasthan from Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) of Kolar district.

The tomato load belongs to three traders, who used private transport to send the produce to Jaipur. Munireddy, one of the three traders, said that they have not been able to contact the truck driver or the transport operators.

The truck driver, along with his assistant, left Kolar on Thursday and the driver was in touch with the traders until Saturday.

"However, we realised that the GPS was switched off by Sunday morning and the driver went incommunicado," Munireddy said.

 "We are not sure whether the driver stole the tomatoes or whether the truck was hijacked on the highway," said a senior police official.

According to the police, the truck covered 1,800 km and the last location before the GPS went off was Nasik, Maharashtra. Nasik houses the biggest tomato market in Asia, while Kolar is the second largest. This last known location has raised suspicions that the driver may have stolen the load and taken it to sell it in Nasik.

Sources from the police said that they are trying to contact their counterparts in other states.

The Bengaluru city police recently arrested a couple who, along with their associates, hijacked a truck laden with 2.5 tonnes of tomatoes from a farmer of Chitradurga on July 8.

The couple took the hijacked truck to Tamil Nadu and sold the tomatoes.