Hyderabad: Two Telugu students, from Telangana’s Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur, were arrested in the US after allegedly being accused of shoplifting at a grocery store last month.
The students aged 20 and 21, had moved to New Jersey, US to pursue higher studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology. The US police arrested the students on March 19 for allegedly not paying for certain items that they had purchased at the grocery store, Hoboken ShopRite.
The students from Hyderabad and Guntur allegedly paid for two items before trying to leave with 27 items, amounting to Rs 12,948.29 (USD 155). One of the students offered to pay the full amount or even double it for the items they had stolen earlier. Meanwhile, the other pleaded with the police to release them, promising they wouldn’t commit the same offence again.
When the police asked why they hadn’t paid for some items, one of them explained that she had a “limited balance” in her account while the other said that they had simply forgotten.
The students were informed by the police that what they had done was a crime and that action was to be taken to ensure that the law was upheld. The Hyderabad-origin student and her friend were also requested to provide written confirmation that they wouldn’t revisit the shop in the US.
In 2015, two Indian women were caught stealing 155 razors worth Rs 3.75 lakh (USD 4,500) from a Walmart store in Tennessee, US.
The CCTV camera captured the footage of the incident where the women carrying a six or seven-year-old child were seen lifting the razors from the personal grooming section at the store. They made a run for the other exit. The woman then fled the spot in a minivan.
