Thieves looted seven shops in the Jorhat Stadium complex in the heart of the town on Tuesday night and decamped with cash and other valuables.
The shops are hardly 200 metre away from the Circuit House where Assam governor Prof Jagdish Mukhi put up on Tuesday night, adjacent to the official residence of the superintendent of police (SP) and near the DC bungalow.
A shopkeeper said it was astonishing that thieves broke the locks of seven shops and then the locks of the cash boxes in each shop which must have taken some time but they were not noticed by patrolling policemen.
The shopkeeper said Rs 36,000 had been stolen from his cash box and a much larger sum from the neighbouring one.
According to a police source, thieves broke into the shops and reportedly took away about Rs 1 lakh in cash from the shops, a sports bicycle and a mobile handset.
The shops which were burgled include two restaurants, a sports shop, two mobile/computer selling shops and one shop dealing in vehicle parts.
Last week, several shops were burgled inside the Bisturam Barooah Hall Market along the busy AT Road and adjacent to the office of the Jorhat SP.
On February 13, two motorcycle-borne youths made an unsuccessful attempt to snatch a bag reportedly containing Rs 5 lakh from a hotel employee in the busy Marwari Patty locality here.
On February 6 last, two motorbike-borne men in a similar way had snatched a bag containing Rs 3.3 lakh from Promode Agarwal, a businessman from Sarupathar in Golaghat district who came here to purchase goods from the wholesale market.
On January 13, in a similar incident, two motorbike-borne youths reportedly snatched a bag containing Rs 4 lakh from a government employee, Karna Deka, at Rajabari area in front of the Jorhat District Transport Officer’s office.
A large number of incidents of snatchings by motorbike-borne persons in the town occurred last year and are on the rise.