Indian-origin dairy owner’s shop was targeted by a bunch of burglars amid rising crime and violence against dairy workers and owners in New Zealand.
According to media accounts, armed robbers targeted two dairy establishments owned by business people of Indian descent this week in New Zealand, about a month after a businessman of Indian descent was killed in a related crime.
According to a report by 1News, Ajit Patel, the owner of a dairy on Melrose Road, claimed that five masked men brandishing baseball bats entered his shop 10 to 15 seconds early on Monday. Attempts by the men to steal the till, according to Patel, were unsuccessful.
A spokesperson was quoted by 1News as saying, “Police are following lines of enquiry to locate the offenders and to determine whether the incidents are linked.”
According to a police spokeswoman, in a separate incident, a group of individuals ram-raided Sandra Dairy on Marua Road in Ellerslie and stole a number of products before escaping in a second vehicle.
The two stores were among six that was attacked earlier this week by robbers in the Auckland and Waikato regions. India-based businesses have been the target of many of the country’s rising incidences of crime and violence against small business owners.
Four men broke into Hamilton dairy owner Puneet Singh’s business last Saturday and used a machete to sever two of his fingers. Singh is of Indian descent.
After the death of Janak Patel, an Indian-born dairy shop worker, in Sandringham last month, there were nationwide protests. Following the murder, the New Zealand government unveiled further initiatives to fight retail crime, including a subsidy programme for fog cannons that is available to all small retailers and dairies.
Following Janak’s passing, protests broke out in New Zealand, with thousands of people demonstrating in front of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s electoral office in Mt. Albert while shouting “enough is enough” and brandishing signs that read “change the law.” The majority of dairy business owners and employees in New Zealand who are of Indian descent claim they are afraid to go to work.
Following Janak’s passing, New Zealand launched new initiatives to combat retail crime, including giving shop owners a NZ$4,000 subsidy to put fog cannons in their establishments to deter burglaries.
“It’s time to stop,” Sunny Kaushal, the head of the New Zealand Dairy and Business Owners Group, told NZ Herald earlier. He added that many people are upset and irritated by the “games this government is continuing to play and the lies they tell”.
Earlier, A group of teenage armed robbers stormed the store owned by a businessman of Indian descent in New Zealand, according to a media source, days after Janak Patel, a shopkeeper of Indian descent was killed during an alleged robbery. During the terrible incident, a worker’s neck was put under a knife.
Sidhu Naresh, the owner of the vape shop in Hamilton, North Island, told the New Zealand Herald newspaper on Monday that four young thieves stormed into his business on Friday. “My staff was made to kneel, and a knife was put to his neck,” Naresh was quoted as saying.
According to Sidhu, “They came and smashed everything, every single cabinet, and they walked away with the till.”
Prior to the announcement of the subsidy, Chris Hipkins, the police minister, was questioned by Du Plessis-Allan during her show about why “it took someone to die”.
Hipkins stated, “This is something we have been working on for a while, and we have been working in association with other community leaders. Some of the changes that were announced today were changes that were requested by small businesses around Auckland.”
Hipkins said that the government had put a lot of effort into making sure it was “hitting the mark” and securing more assistance for small businesses. Although he acknowledged that so far only eight stores have had the 431 different security measures installed, he claimed that the $6 million is now being used for that purpose.
