Chor, chor 8211; A shoplifter includes me, he, she8230;

8220;The poor never dare to enter leading stores,8221; says Bharat Shah of the Archies Gallery at Fergusson College Road, which loses anything between Rs 2,000 and Rs 5,000 over six months to shoplifters.

8220;During rush hour even married women wearing heavy gold jewellery can8217;t resist the temptation to slip some small gift items into their purses,8221; says Dilip Jadhav, owner of Greetwel.

But the notoriously regular shoplifters are outstation college students who indulge in it for the sheer thrill of winning a bet or getting away with a 8220;daylight robbery.8221;

Generally entering in groups, boys aim for the aftershaves, blades, toothbrushes and combs, while girls prefer cosmetics, cards, imitation jewellery, soaps, lipsticks, masalas and chocolates. 8220;Anything small is dangerous,8221; says Thrity Poonawala of the Dorabjees.

And if caught, their only defence is arrogance. 8220;I had observed a girl stuffing five or six cards in the pockets of her skirt,8221; says Philip Fernandes of DPhilips. 8220;When she didn8217;t pay for them at the counter, I politely asked her to return them. Instead she bluntly dared me to put my hand in her pockets and check for myself.8221; Since he did not have any lady staff present then, he had to let her go.

Similarly, when Thrity asked a girl to return the items she had stuffed in her jacket pockets, she said she would file a defamation case against the store. When that did not work, she threatened to strip in the centre of the store to prove her innocence. Finally, she got away by feigning a stomach-ache and flushing the items down the toilet.

The simplest method, says Fernandes, is to ask for jewellery or watches at a counter, put your handkerchief on top of one of them and slip it into your pocket. Girls walk out of stores undetected, paying for only one piece of jewellery, wearing on their person what they stole.

8220;Almost 50 per cent of the shoplifters are school children,8221; says Thrity. 8220;Though we once had an entire family flicking goods from the store; when we confronted them, they panicked and escaped in their Maruti Esteem.8221;

While shoplifters are caught in the act at least twice a week or more in most stores, shop owners say there8217;s little they can do to prevent it. Big stores like Dorabjees, or Greetwel, which is spread over two floors, can afford video cameras, but their utility is limited. Ramchandran of Super Shoppe on Fergusson College Road says he prefers his trained security staff.

8220;We don8217;t have the time to monitor the videos during rush hours, they are meant only to put some fear into the customers,8221; says Dilip Jadhav. Other store owners say they serve only to monitor whether their staff are working satisfactorily. If a store does not have space for the customers to leave their shopping bags outside, they are forced to reduce the number of 8220;open display8221; items and transfer them behind the counters manned by staff, who find it difficult to trail continuously behind a customer if he takes more than 30 minutes to make his selection.

They rarely haul shoplifters to the police, considering it a 8220;waste of time.8221; It8217;s futile to ask for fines, for often the culprits do not have enough cash on them. Like a youth from Wanowrie, who stole a watch worth Rs 150 from Greetwel last month, but had only Rs three on him. 8220;We made him take off his shirt and give it to us as a punishment,8221; says Vasanth Waghamode, in the advertising section of Greetwel.

Rarely does their guilty conscience get the better of them: like one man, who, embarrassed on finding that he had been observed stealing, made an excuse to go to his car, leaving his wallet behind for the management to recover the cost of the item. Owners say it8217;s futile to threaten to inform parents, school or college authorities, or their work-place, for they never divulge their real names and addresses; but it frightens them sufficiently to ensure they stay away from that shop in the future.

Since owners find that they have no reliable methods to deter those bent on shoplifting, they have no choice but to suffer the losses. 8220;Supermarkets are not very profitable, and if a few items are stolen, we lose the entire margin of profit on that particular line of goods,8221; says Thrity. And the most drastic recourse is to take those items most favoured by shoplifters off the racks8230;in the case of Dorabjees8217;8230; it was condoms.