Amid several cases of theft of tomatoes in recent weeks amid a spike in the price of the kitchen staple, a farmer in Maharashtra's Aurangabad installed a CCTV camera to safeguard his 'treasure'.
Tomatoes are being sold anywhere between Rs 120 to Rs 250 in the country. The farmer told PTI he installed the CCTV camera to keep an eye on his plantation after tomato thieves recently came to his farm at Shahpur Banjar, about 20 km from Aurangabad.
The farmer, Sharad Rawte, said he had no choice other than embracing digital surveillance. Rawte, while talking to PTI, said that he cannot afford to lose any more tomatoes as they are the most in-demand nowadays.
He said that a crate weighing around 22-25 kg of tomatoes was now being sold at Rs 3,000. Rawte's farm is spread across five acres and he has grown the red berries on 1.5 acres. The tomatoes that he has planted so far will easily fetch him Rs 6-7 lakh.
He told PTI, "Around 10 days ago, 20-25 kilos of tomatoes were stolen from my farm in Gangapur taluka. To protect the remaining crop that is yet to ripen, I’ve installed a CCTV camera worth Rs 22,000."
While talking about its benefit, he said that he can check the visuals from anywhere through his phone. The farmer said the camera runs on solar energy so he doesn't have to worry about its power supply.
Last week, a Jaipur-bound truckload of tomatoes from Karnataka went missing. A trader from Karnataka’s Kolar region claimed that he lost touch with the truck driver and the cleaner. The truck was filled with 11 tonnes of tomatoes, which were worth around Rs 21 lakh.
According to a police complaint, the truck, with 750 crates of tomatoes, left the local ‘mandi’ in Kolar on July 27 and was scheduled to reach Jaipur with the consignment on July 29.