(PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)

A foreign worker was arrested by the police on suspicion that for a year he stole goods worth tens of thousands of shekels from a grocery store.

The Israel Police received a report from the owner of a grocery store in a community near Jerusalem, according to which for a long time he noticed that the products were “disappeared” from the shelves whose accumulated value was tens of thousands of shekels, and that he suspected a person living nearby.

With the clear understanding that theft and damage to a person’s property directly harm the livelihood and security of the law-abiding normative citizen. The police investigators opened a covert investigation to locate the suspect. For this purpose, the researchers collected findings and evidence from the grocery store and its surroundings using advanced technological means.

The suspect was identified as a 46-year-old foreign national from Sri Lanka who has been living in Israel for the past four years. In the past year, he worked as a caregiver in the home of an elderly man living near the grocery store, who was unaware of the suspect’s actions and of hiding the stolen property in a storeroom in the home.

The suspect was taken into custody on Monday, 22 Menachem Av. In the search conducted by the police in the house and in the storehouse, a lot of property was seized, according to the suspicion, items that had been taken from the grocery store during the past year.

The suspect was brought for questioning at the Mate Yehuda police station on suspicion of theft, during which it emerged that the suspect had ‘accumulated’ the items and intended to send them to his family in Sri Lanka.

Upon completion of his interrogation, the suspect was transferred to the immigration authorities last night, where his residence permit and work were revoked and the purpose of his deportation from Israel in the coming days.

All seized property was returned by the police to the owners of the grocery store, who were moved by the amount of products returned to them.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Police spokesman unit)