Tricks of Robbery while traveling on Indian road: True glimpses

 

Tagline: Put your mind on alert mode to smash robbers’ intention

 Traveling around the globe is an exhilarating experience but at the same time, it offers intense challenges and risks to holidaymakers. Robbery or threats associated with travelling can be downhearted and sometimes travelers may abort their exciting travel tour also after amassing the threatening facts about their chosen tourist destination. Instead of cancelling the enjoyable trip in vacation, it is a time to collate precise information about the tourist spot and mark danger points related to web of roads. 

In highways or city roads, robbery or mugging is very common offence. Any person can be gripped under such crooks. They play unique tricks to attack on travelers driving on road.

In real life scenario, it was reported that in Bhopal city, MP, India, when couple were going by car to shopping Centre, “New market”, they stopped the car on roadside for some work. When person on driving seat got down from car, one teenaged boy came close to him suddenly and said that your ID fell down. Person turn down to pick the ID, boy snatched his purse with trick and ran away. Couple were stunned and realized that they were robbed. Though, it was common style of snatching valuables but it happened suddenly so that couple could not made efforts to save their money.

In highways, when people enjoy driving, miscreants are also active to spoil their trip. In lively example, travelers were narrowly escaped for being robbed from such offenders.  One family had attended the marriage ceremony in “Prayagraj” in northern region of India during the year, 2000. Next day, early morning at round 4.00 AM, they started for Lucknow by own car with high speed as road were free from crowd. Soon, they were approaching to small town, “Kunda Harnam Ganj”, very sensitive area of robbery at that time. Driving on deserted road, they saw at the distance of about 100 mtrs, one person was lying down and occupying full left lane of the road. Male member of the family was driving the car sensibly and sensed the trick of that robber as that was prone area for robbery so he did not reduce the speed. When car came closer to that person, suddenly he jumped out from the road. It is imperative to aware of the tactics of robbery to keep safe while driving on highways. Male of that family saved all from untoward incident with his brainy approach. Though he had decided in such situation to make sharp turn to save lying person’s life using his driving skill. Moreover, in such situation, travelers can call the cops to protect themselves.

 On highways, criminals also use entrap of robbery by throwing nails fitted in wooden sticks. When car passes through these sticks, tyre gets damaged and person has to stop the vehicle then offenders can easily assault on tourists to rob them.

Recently, we had an experience of typical robbery tricks but we were narrowly escaped. During February, 2023, we were travelling by car from Jhansi to Lucknow, cities in Uttar Pradesh, India. We were going with highway speed. There was slight rush of vehicles when we passed through small city, “Urai”. We were going at uniform speed. Suddenly one motorbike passed through very close to our car from left side and person sitting on back of bike were pointing us that car tyre pressure is low or there is some issue with tyre. He was constantly pointing us through action that tyre is punctured. But we experienced that car is moving smooth and he didn’t feel that there is some trouble with tyre so he didn’t stop the car nearby. After half kilometer, we thought that we should check the tyres as we were on highway and didn’t want to take any risk. So, we stopped the car. My husband thoroughly checked all the tyres and other parts of the car. All the four tyres were intact and fit. Then we sensed that we were escaped from being robbed. It was the new trick of robbers to attack on travelers.

Other real circumstances can also be noted. It was happened with us in 2018, when we were returning from exciting tourist place in Southern region. We were moving by car and in “Chitoor” city,  Andhra Pradesh in India, my husband stopped at one highway patrol pump to refill the fuel and fill the air in all tyres. After doing so, we started journey but my husband complained that driving is not smooth. On road, we saw some strange people looking at our vehicle. We were restless and we slowly drove the car to reach in city to check the tyre pressure. When we reached the city and got it checked, the pressure of tyres was very low and susceptible to vehicle breakdown. We all instantly comprehended that there was an intention of people near petrol pump to rob us in between the city. Gist of this scenario is that it is better to check the vehicle from all angles at starting point of journey because highway stoppage may sometime put the tourists in trouble.

On highway drive, robbers also apply tricks to keep the diversion board to divert on wrong deserted lane to make loot. 

Another form of robbery is forming gang of fake police on highways. They stop the car to check the documents and drag out travelers from car. Then they snatch all valuables and disappear on their vehicle. In such case, people must show courage and ask the policemen like name of police station they belong to and what is their rank. Or people can also tell them that we are ready to go to nearest police station to get the documents checked. Note that this is just common tactic to tackle such issues. It is suggested to travelers to confirm with associated authority to know the difference between fake and genuine police officer to handle the issue.

It is difficult to curb such transgressions and provide defensive covering to tourists but people can assuage risks of driving and fail the tricks of robbery through alertness, preparedness and taking preventive measures. People traveling on highways or make long drive tour to other places are center of attraction to robbers as normally they carry money, credit cards, cameras and valuables like jewelries specially when going to attend any family celebrations or marriages. It is also advisable to discuss with friends and family about tourist destinations before starting the journey. Such inputs can avert the devastation of pleasurable trip when families go by car.

Robbery while traveling has longlisting psychological repercussion on tourists such phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental ailments.

Bottom line:

Robbery during traveling is always a bitter experience to car movers and leave severe setback. Tourists sometimes are not well informed and aware of peril of surroundings therefore they are easily targeted by robbers on highways or even on city roads also. Robbers are very smart and adopt novel tricks to defeat smart travelers such as caring about their trip, asking address or sometimes appear as fake officers. We can make our trip wonderful with stuffing corpus information and using sense of humor to washout the mission of robbers.

Important note. Above article is created on the basis experience and environmental reports. Tackling the troubled situations mentioned in article is individual suggestions. It is advised to take guidance of experts while planning tour. Writer is not responsible for any dispute.