Bengaluru: For years, 66-year-old Rajanna HG was a familiar face outside the Anjaneya temple in Nandini Layout’s II Block-North, where he earned his livelihood by selling fresh flowers. As his trade relied heavily on quick transactions, Rajanna required a steady supply of loose change. Once a month, like clockwork, he would visit the bank to exchange larger bills for Rs 10,000 worth of assorted currency notes and coins.Trusting the familiarity of his routine and the sacred surroundings of the temple, Rajanna developed a long-standing habit of tightly wrapping his hard-earned cash into a small cloth bag and securing it beneath his pushcart daily. Every morning, he would return, untie the bundle and set up his vibrant display of flowers for sale.But on May 25, everything changed. Rajanna noticed the money bag felt unusually light. Suspecting he was losing track of his earnings, he carefully counted exactly Rs 10,000 in change, wrapped it up tightly, tied it beneath the cart the same night and headed home.The next morning, his heart sank. On counting the cash, he found only Rs 9,200. Overnight he lost Rs 800, but the cloth bundle itself wasn’t moved or untied. Baffled, Rajanna confided in his fellow street vendors, who guessed that someone who knew his exact routine was stealthily skimming small amounts of cash from the bag to avoid detection.The worst, however, was yet to come. On the morning of May 27, Rajanna arrived at his cart to find the remaining Rs 9,000 missing. This time, the thief wasn’t discreet — the cloth bag was left torn open.Distraught but determined, Rajanna initially prepared to head straight to the police station. Instead, he decided to investigate first to give the authorities something concrete to work with. Knowing that the temple and surrounding businesses were equipped with security cameras, the elderly vendor approached shop owners and temple management officials, politely requesting access to their CCTV footage from the previous two nights.As Rajanna meticulously combed through hours of grainy, early-morning recordings, a familiar face suddenly filled the screen. The footage captured a local youth, identified as Charan alias Jollu, loitering near the pushcart very early in the morning. Subsequent angles of footage from neighbouring shops painted a damning picture, showing Charan approaching Rajanna’s cart and later walking away in a highly suspicious manner.With undeniable proof in hand, Rajanna consulted his family and fellow vendors before formally lodging a complaint at the local police station, presenting the investigators with the compiled video evidence. The local police were both impressed and grateful for the flower vendor’s quick-witted initiative. “Rajanna has done most of our work, like watching the CCTV footage and zeroing in on the suspect,” a senior police officer said. “Now, it is only up to us to find and arrest Charan,” the officer added.
