The Great Indian Onion Heist
In the list of goods worth stealing, you might expect onions to rank somewhere between bottom and “why are we even discussing this?”
But thieves in India have tracked rising onion prices as closely as homemakers and the media here in recent weeks leading to a number of thefts and attempted thefts of the root vegetable, which has soared almost five times in value in the last year.
The essential ingredient in Indian cooking is now selling at 90 rupees-100 rupees ($1.48-$1.65) a kilogram in some cities, thanks in part to prolonged rains which delayed the harvest, and alleged hoarding by traders that artificially inflated the price.
In the latest incident, police in Navi Mumbai, a suburb of India’s financial capital, arrested two people alleged to have carried out an onion heist.
Deva Majumdar and Salim Shaikh were arrested early Tuesday, when they were trying to cart off five bags of onions containing about 288 kg of the vegetable, police investigating the case said.
The men took the bags of from an open-sided storage space after traders went home and transferred it to one of the abandoned buildings of state-run trading company National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. ready to collect it later, said D. Chavan, an assistant sub-inspector in Navi Mumbai police. They were arrested when they came to pick up the stash, he added.
Maharashtra, where Navi Mumbai is located, is the biggest onion producing state in India. Nafed has been assigned by the government to import onions from the overseas markets and sell them in the domestic market to ease the supply shortage in recent months.
In August, three men tried to hijack a truck load of onions on the road between Jaipur and New Delhi, according to a report in The Times of India.
While earlier that month in the western state of Gujarat, vegetable traders intercepted a thief, who is believed to have stolen onions from the local market, according to another report in The Times of India.
Mr. Chavan of Navi Mumbai police said they have now increased the patrolling at night in the wholesale market, which supplies vegetables, spices and grains to the retail traders in Mumbai.
India is one of the largest producers of onions in the world and is usually a net exporter. But this year it has imported onions from Egypt and China, and it is looking elsewhere, including to arch rival Pakistan, to meet the domestic demand.
The high price of onions is a worry for India’s ruling Congress Party ahead of state and national elections.
The cost of the vegetable has contributed to the electoral downfall of regional and national governments in the past.
Both Congress and India’s main opposition party the Bharatiya Janata Party have been selling onions at deeply-discounted prices in recent weeks in the run up to polls.
Onions are not the only food item on the radar of thieves. Other seemingly mundane goods such as baked beans, cheese, chocolates have also attracted attention from criminals around the world in recent times.
Follow India Real Time on Twitter @WSJIndia.
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