Talk about too much banana.
For Mumbai police, you can never have enough of the yellow fruit if you want to recover a gold chain from the stomach of a thief.
Last week, a man was accused of snatching a 25-gram gold chain from a woman at the Ghatkopar East fish market. Onlookers at the market chased and eventually caught the thief, but by the time the man was handed over to the police, he had already swallowed the jewellery so no evidence would incriminate him.
Police in Mumbai conducted two successive x-ray exams on the man. It was revealed that he had swallowed the chain when they saw in the x-rays that the chain was in his stomach.
The man still denied the theft. Police tried administering an enema, but to no avail. Doctors told police that the best way to retrieve the swallowed chain was to do an operation.
Apparently, the man thought the police had no way of getting the evidence from his stomach. As it happens, the local authorities had a unique strategy to recover such items from stomachs. An operation was too expensive.
In order to retrieve the stolen gold chain from the thief's tummy, they had to force feed him with 48 bananas through the night.
According to NDTV, Mumbai police Senior Inspector Shankar Dhanavade told the AFP that "He was fed more than 40 bananas throughout the day."
"Eventually the chain was found. We made him wash and disinfect it," he added.
True enough, the strategy worked.
The following morning, the man excreted the chain.
On Friday, the 25-year-old man appeared before the court and is now in police custody.
Apparently, no culprit will get away from these policemen.
According to the Hindustan Times, this isn't the first time that police in Mumbai have used bananas to make a thief expel stolen property after consuming it.
In April 29, 2015, Mumbai police arrested a man named Anil Yadav after he snatched and swallowed a Rs 60,000 gold chain with a large pendant that got stuck inside his food pipe.
In order to get the evidence of his theft, the police officers then force-fed Yadav with more than what police fed the jewel thief in Ghatkopar. Yadav was reportedly given five dozen bananas and other liquid food to induce bowel movement.
However, this attempt proved unsuccessful. Police then fed him a special diet. Three days after the diet, the thief eventually excreted the chain and the pendant.
The victim, too disgusted to use the chain again, didn't even dare touch it. The victim took the chain to a jeweller while inside a plastic bag and bought a new chain to replace the excreted one.
The same technique was used on a thief in July. He stole and ate a Rs 30,000 "mangalsutra" necklace. He reportedly expelled the jewellery after consuming two dozen bananas, several litres of milk and laxatives.