Alleged hand sanitizer thief comes clean following capture on TransJakarta bus

A woman filmed stealing a bottle of hand sanitizer on a bus in Jakarta. Photo: Video screengrab
A woman filmed stealing a bottle of hand sanitizer on a bus in Jakarta. Photo: Video screengrab

TransJakarta bus employees have caught a passenger who committed a minor crime only imaginable during this pandemic.

Last week, the city bus company released CCTV footage taken from on board a bus headed to Halimun from Ragunan. A masked passenger in an orange outfit and a red hat can then be seen swiping a communal hand sanitizer bottle near the bus’ rear exit before shoving it into her bag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg9CvNDFhWs

It would’ve been the perfect crime as authorities failed to identify her. However, on Sunday, it seemed that her limited wardrobe became her undoing.

“Our security staff captured the culprit at the Blok M bus stop,” TransJakarta CEO Sardjono Jhony Tjitrokusumo said in a press release.

Sardjono said two security employees thought they might have spotted the alleged hand sanitizer thief because she was wearing exactly the same orange outfit and red hat at the South Jakarta bus stop.

“The culprit has signed a statement confessing her wrongdoing,” Sardjono said.

The alleged thief told security staff that she stole the hand sanitizer to treat an unspecified ailment on her leg.

The bus company did not press charges against the alleged hand sanitizer thief, but did say that it’s stepping up security lest more bottles of hand sanitizer — so essential in these times — go missing.

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