According to news reports, 150 cartons of Cadbury chocolate bars worth Rs 17 lakh were stolen from a godown in Lucknow's Chinhat area. The incident happened between Monday and Tuesday night.

The godown was earlier the home of Cadbury distributor Rajendra Singh Sidhu who recently shifted to an apartment in Gomti Nagar. Sidhu said he has filed an FIR at the Chinhat police station and urged locals to provide any inputs they have on the theft, reported news agency ANI.

“We've filed an FIR in the Chinhat police station. If anyone has any input, please guide us,” ANI quoted Rajendra Singh Sidhu as saying.

According to the FIR, Sidhu was using the old Chinhat house as a godown for storing the chocolates when he received a phone call from a neighbour on Tuesday informing him that the door was broken.

When the distributor went to the old house, he found that the entire godown was empty, and the security cameras had been stolen by the thieves. He informed the police that one of his neighbours heard a pick-up vehicle in the middle of the night and thought Sidhu had come to take away some stock. He speculated that the thieves may have used the truck to transfer the stolen chocolates.

Police are scanning the footage of other CCTV cameras installed in the area for some clues, according to media reports.