Wayanad: Monkeys raiding the tourists' vehicles for fruits, packed food and packaged drinks are common at the viewpoint of the Wayanad Ghat Road.
But a pack of simians with a sense of adventure got luckier, or unlucky depending on how you look at it, when they laid their hands on an iPhone 12, now priced around Rs 65,000.
Pilathottatthil Jasim had joined his friends to pose for selfies when someone alerted him to the grand theft. He could only watch helplessly as the troop retreated to the trees with his phone in hand.
When the tourists raised a hue and cry, the monkey probably realised that it had made a ‘nasty' lift. Not to invite any more trouble from humans, it threw the phone down to the valley. Soon, in true gangster style, the troop left the scene leaving Jasim and friends wondering how to retrieve his phone.
Though they offered a reward for retrieving the phone, no local resident ventured down the slippery slope.
Then somebody suggested calling the Fire and Rescue team for help.
Initially, the officer who attended the call said they would intervene only if there was a threat to life, Jasim convinced them that the phone contained many documents that could 'threaten' his future if not fetched from the ravine.
Fire and Rescue officer Jithin Kumar M then ventured down 60 ft to fetch the phone. "The whole operation took just 30 minutes," he said. "We used the full mountaineering kit provided by the Fire and Rescue Services Academy (FARSA), Thrissur," he added.
He warned that the team won't respond to 'lost and missing' calls all the time. "Our priority is to save lives and intervene in life-threatening situations," he said.
The rescue team was headed by Fire and Rescue Assistant Station Officer P M Anil and included N S Anoop, M P Dhaneeshkumar, B Sherafudheen, and home guard K B Prajeesh.