The Ghaziabad Development Authority's (GDA) bid to beautify its parks suffered a setback when armed robbers took away three deer statues from a park, in one case after a scuffle with a guard.
The incident occurred on Monday-Tuesday night at Meerut Tiraha.
GDA Vice Chairperson and District Magistrate Ritu Maheswari had inaugurated the park only a week ago at the junction of Link Road from National Highway 24 and 58 and Old GT Road.
The robbers came to the park at 2 in the morning, raising the guard's suspicion. At an unguarded moment, they plucked out two deer statues from the park and escaped on their two-wheeler.
The police were alerted but they left after preliminary investigation.
Again, at 5 a.m., the same criminals returned to the park and uprooted the third deer statue. But this time the guard challenged them.
In the scuffle, the horns broke and remained with the guard. But the men escaped with the main statue.
The value of the stolen statues was not immediately known.
A GDA official said security would be strengthened soon in all parks and admitted that this theft was a setback in its attempt to beautify Ghaziabad.
--IANS
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