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Published online 20 February 2008 | Nature 451, 879 (2008) | doi:10.1038/451879d
News in Brief
India has a key satellite antenna stolen for scrap
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It possibly happened because the Institute authorities have strange ways of dealing with such problems. Not long back, petty thieves would enter the campus and cut down sandalwood trees for the economic value of the wood, possibly in connivance with the security officers of the Institute. There were instances when the thieves had to run away at times, leaving their cutting equipment behind, and they actually came back to take their equipment back from the campus security officers. Instead of purging the campus police of bad elements and tightening the security, the solution that the institute came up with was to cut down all the sandalwood trees so there are none left for the thieves ;-) Obviously the thieves had to find other things now to steal, the antenna would have been an easy target. -Institute Alumnus
These incidents are epitome of many burglary incidents prevalent in the scientific institutes of India. Needless to say that most of them go unreported. In similar lines of the incident happened at IIsc Banglore, many sandal wood trees went missing from campus of one reputed institute located in the city of Lucknow. The motive here was again the commercial value of the wood. All these incidents indicates that there is a laxity in the vigilance in the scientific institutes of India. Perhaps the civil society do not attach much importance to such incidents, as there are bigger incidents happening elsewhere in the country. More serious incidents, such as terrorist attacks on the scientific installation of India (terrorist attacks on IIsc, Bangalore in 2005), are just grim reminders of the laxity of the security functionaries at our institutes and universities.