Stealing a March

India’s rising prosperity can be expected to attract all manner of entrepreneurs to its shores, but the MoU signed between India and Colombia last April on business development cooperation probably did not foresee that it could prompt four burglars to cross oceans to seek their fortune in Delhi.

Armed with cheap bolt cutters from Walmart (which did not set off alarm bells, of course, unlike known ‘suspicious items’ such as liquids over 100ml and nailcutters), and bolstered by the conventional wisdom that Indian policing and prosecution are lax, all the four needed were bucketshop tickets to the land of malls and money. If the cache recovered from one Colombian is any indication — Rs 15 lakh in jewellery and Rs 1.56 lakh in cash — their faith in India Shining had been vindicated, though their endeavours would not help enhance the value of bilateral trade between India and Colombia, currently hovering around $1 billion.

Even if Indian interest in Colombia may rest largely on the lilting persona of Shakira and the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombians have been far more eclectic about their Indian activities. The woman apprehended last month for overstaying by seven years after attending a yoga school in Munger, Bihar, would probably not have anything in common with her compatriot arrested as part of a Rs 25 crore chemical drugs haul in Mumbai and Thane except their vision of India as the land of opportunity.

Indeed, the arrest of a Peruvian national a few days ago for purloining the luggage of unwary travellers at Delhi airport’s new Terminal 3 — a year after three Peruvians were held for allegedly stealing handbags at five star hotels in the capital — shows that Colombia is not the only South American nation whose ordinary people have realised India’s worth.