You never want to encourage criminals and that's not what we're doing here, obviously. But, I mean, you gotta admit... this takes a lot of nerve:

One morning last week, when four or five men - including some from the state government's Irrigation Department - turned up in Amiyavar village, near the city of Sasaram, with an earth excavator and gas cutting torches, local villagers were happy. They thought the government had finally begun work on their request to remove an old, disused bridge.

For three days, the men would arrive at the site at 7am and work until dusk, chipping away at the remains of the bridge, cutting the iron with gas torches and using excavators to loosen the earth...

"No-one suspected it was a heist," local journalist Jitendra Singh, who lives just "200 metres from the bridge", told the BBC.

Ah, but it was a heist:

"I tried calling Irrigation Department official Radhe Shyam Singh, but when he didn't answer, I called a senior official to ask why they had not followed procedure: the authorities are expected to issue a tender and the work is given to the lowest bidder," he said.

The official told him that he had not issued any order and was unaware that the bridge had been taken down.

Government officials, man: Always the last ones to know.

Anyway the dudes didn't get far:

"We have seized a JCB machine [earth excavator], gas cutting torches and cylinders, a pick-up van and 247kg of metal," Mr Bharti said.

Crime doesn't pay, kids—they'll always getcha in the end!

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