He planted banana trees beside his house with great enthusiasm, and they fruit every year. Yet the fruit from the trees he planted with his own hands never reached his home: thieves always got there first. Now a former member of the Indian Army has come up with an unusual way to protect it.

He has driven bamboo poles into the ground around the base of the banana trees, enclosed them with corrugated tin sheets and hung a padlock on the enclosure. To save the banana bunches hanging high up, he has used a special heavy iron mesh suspended from the bamboo. If anyone tries to cut a bunch, it will fall into the iron mesh and stay there instead of dropping to the ground.

The unusual scene is in Kachulia village of Gobardanga in North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal. Former soldier Rafiqul Islam had planted several banana trees by the road next to his house, and adopted the method to stop both the bananas and the banana flowers from being stolen.

Rafiqul says the method has largely worked. "I served in the army, so I understand security and defence well," he said. "After I retired, my interest in farming grew. I first planted these banana trees in 2019 and they fruited within a year. But right up to 2024 I could not take a single banana home from them, let alone a banana flower."

"This time I saw that several trees had flowered," he said. "I decided I had to protect them somehow, and that is when the idea came to me. No sooner thought than done: first I put in the bamboo, then I hung the mesh, and to protect the trees I enclosed them with tin and locked it."

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.